Aqua, Latin for water, is a NASA Earth Science satellite mission named for the large amount of information that the mission is collecting about the Earth's water cycle, including evaporation from the oceans, water vapor in the atmosphere, clouds, precipitation, soil moisture, sea ice, land ice, and snow cover on the land and ice. Additional variables also measured by Aqua include radiative energy fluxes, aerosols, vegetation cover on the land, phytoplankton and dissolved organic matter in the oceans, and air, land, and water temperatures. This brochure provides a comprehensive overview of the Aqua spacecraft, instruments, science, and data products.

This resource presents a brief overview the glaciation that created the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve. Links are provided to maps of the region, information about coastal geology, glaciers, volcanoes, mountains, and recommended reading.

The research-based Arctic Climate Modeling Program (ACMP) is funded by NSF ITEST. Curriculum based resources were designed with input from 21 scientists from the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute. Resources include K-12 inquiry-based classroom lessons, a student network for observing arctic weather, digital lectures, and an interactive multimedia learning system (on DVD).

This animation shows the daily sea ice surface temperature over the northern hemisphere from September 2002 through May 2003. The sea ice surface temperature was measured by the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite. Since this instrument cannot take measurements through clouds or in the dark, in dark or cloud-covered regions or areas with suspect data quality, the prior days value is retained until a valid data reading is obtained. The color of the sea ice indicates the sea ice surface temperature.

Dive and Discover brings you right aboard the expedition to the Juan de Fuca Ridge in the Pacific Ocean, where scientists are exploring hydrothermal vent fields and microbes inhabiting hydrothermal vents. The site gives you access to the latest oceanographic and deep submergence research from a variety of scientists including geologists, geophysicists, chemists, and biologists who are exploring the seafloor and making amazing deep-sea discoveries. The mission and objectives, daily updates, photos, videos, and e-mail correspondence with scientists aboard research vessels allow you to follow the progress of the scientific mission and find out about life on the floating laboratories at sea. Deeper discovery links allow the user to further explore the related topics of mid-ocean ridges, hydrothermal vents, and vent biology. This web page also provides links to other Dive and Discover expeditions, other deeper discovery topics, a teacher's page, and further Dive and Discover information.

Explore vent basics, vents around the world, vent chemistry, boiling points, videos, and test what you've learned with a quiz!

In this video segment adapted from NASA, take a tour of the cryosphere in North America and the Arctic using satellite imagery.

Iceberg B-15A, in Antarctica's McMurdo Sound, is as large as Long Island, NY (3,000 square kilometers or 1,200 square miles) and is the largest fragment of a much larger iceberg that broke away from the Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000. Iceberg B-15A has trapped sea ice in McMurdo Sound, and the ice build-up presents significant problems for Antarctic penguins, which must now swim great distances to reach open waters and food. These images were taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASAs Aqua and Terra satellites between 2004-11-09 and 2005-01-17.

This site offers a window into the world of scientific research on climate change. Learn about physical processes underlying the earth's climate, data on how the climate is changing and the role of human activity, and questions and uncertainties that researchers continue to explore. The site is organized in four parts: the atmosphere, hydrosphere (oceans and water), cryosphere (snow and ice), and biosphere (living organisms).

This website is a cooperative research project between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), NASA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the University of New Orleans. The goal of the project is to investigate coastal change that occurred as a result of Hurricane Katrina. The site includes aerial video, still photography, and laser altimetry surveys of post-storm beach conditions that were collected August 31 and September 1, 2005 for comparison with earlier data. The comparison data can be used to refine predictive models of coastal impacts from severe storms and aid in disaster recovery and erosion mitigation.

Since measurements of Jakobshavn Isbrae were first taken in 1850, the glacier has gradually receded, finally coming to rest at a certain point for the past 5 decades. However, from 1997 to 2003, the glacier has begun to recede again, this time almost doubling in speed. The finding is important for many reasons. For starters, as more ice moves from glaciers on land into the ocean, it raises sea levels. Jakobshavn Isbrae is Greenlands largest outlet glacier, draining 6.5 percent of Greenlands ice sheet area. The ice streams speed-up and near-doubling of ice flow from land into the ocean has increased the rate of sea level rise by about .06 millimeters (about .002 inches) per year, or roughly 4 percent of the 20th century rate of sea level increase. This animation shows a time-lapse sequence of the ice flowing toward the ocean. In recent years, even ice that has traditionally remained in place is now being pulled down to the edge of land.

Since measurements of Jakobshavn Isbrae were first taken in 1850, the glacier has gradually receded, finally coming to rest at a certain point for the past 5 decades. However, from 1997 to 2003, the glacier has begun to recede again, this time almost doubling in speed. The finding is important for many reasons. For starters, as more ice moves from glaciers on land into the ocean, it raises sea levels. Jakobshavn Isbrae is Greenlands largest outlet glacier, draining 6.5 percent of Greenlands ice sheet area. The ice streams speed-up and near-doubling of ice flow from land into the ocean has increased the rate of sea level rise by about .06 millimeters (about .002 inches) per year, or roughly 4 percent of the 20th century rate of sea level increase. This animation shows the recession for three years, from 2001 through 2003. The line of recession shows the place where the glacier meets the ocean and where pieces calve off and flow away from land toward open water.

The Larsen ice shelf at the northern end of the Antarctic Peninsula experienced a dramatic collapse between January 31 and March 7, 2002. First, melt ponds appeared on the ice shelf during these summer months (seen in blue on the shelf), then a minor collapse of about 800 square kilometers occurred. Finally, a 2600 square kilometer collapse took place, leaving thousands of sliver icebergs and berg fragments where the shelf formerly lay. Brownish streaks within the floating chunks mark areas where rocks and morainal debris are exposed from the former underside and interior of the shelf. These images were acquired by the MODIS instrument on the Terra satellite.

During the last few decades, the permanent snow and ice on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro has almost completely disappeared, at the rate of about a foot and a half of glacial ice lost per year. This loss is primarily due to increasing average annual temperatures in the region, and scientists are speculating that the glaciers could be completely gone from Kilimanjaro by the year 2015. This ice cap formed more that 11,000 years ago, and 80% of the ice fields have been lost in only the last century. The shrinkage is illustrated here in Landsat images from 1993, 2000, and 2002, with the 1993 image showing a significant ice cap and the more recent images showing only small glaciers and snow regions remaining.

In NASA CONNECT Virtual Earth, students will be introduced to Earth system science. They will learn what a system is and how to apply the concept of systems to learn more about how the Earth functions. Students will understand the only way to really comprehend the workings of our planet is to look at the Earth as a whole system. They will also focus on Earth science applications of national priority to expand and accelerate the use of knowledge, science, and technologies resulting from the Earth Science Enterprise mission of improving predictions in weather, climate, and natural hazards. Grades 6-8.

The NeMO curriculum is based on real events and real data: the 1998 eruption at Axial Volcano and the rumbleometer instrument that was stuck in the new lava flow. The activities for the classroom are modeled on how scientists actually investigated this event. This curriculum is intended for middle and high school students in earth science and marine science classes. It is composed of four parts (which are each a separate file):

Part 1 - Introduction and Background Information
Part 2 - Classroom Activities
Part 3 - Movies and Animations
Part 4 - Key for Teachers (this part)

The Pine Island Glacier is the largest discharger of ice in Antarctica and the continents fastest moving glacier. Even so, when a large crack formed across the glacier in mid 2000, it was surprising how fast the crack expanded, 15 meters per day, and how soon the resulting iceberg broke off, mid-November, 2001. This iceberg, called B-21, is 42 kilometers by 17 kilometers and contains seven years of glacier outflow released to the sea in a single event. This series of images from the MISR instrument on the Terra satellite not only shows the crack expanding and the iceberg break off, but the seaward moving glacial flow in the parts of the Pine Island Glacier upstream of the crack.

The sea ice around Antarctica grows dramatically from late February, when large parts of the coast are ice-free, to October, when the amount of sea ice effectively doubles the size of the continent. The SeaWinds Scatterometer instrument on the QuikSCAT satellite captures this dramatic ebb and flow and shows the sea ice as dynamic and always moving, even in areas that are ice-bound. This animation shows the sea ice around Antarctica from SeaWinds during 2004. SeaWinds can see individual icebergs if they are large enough, and a large iceberg can be seen for most of the year south of South America as it moves from the Antarctic Peninsula to the South Sandwich Islands. Also visible are the very convoluted and dynamic border between the sea ice and the open sea and holes in the sea ice created by the movement around fixed land features such as islands.

The Aqua Science Writers Guide provides a comprehensive overview of the Aqua mission, instruments, research, science teams, Aqua website, and public affairs contacts. All information is provided to aid the professional science writer in writing stories and articles related to the Aqua mission.