In December 1972, NASA's Apollo 17 mission captured an iconic photograph of Earth known as The Blue Marble.
A photograph of Earth taken from Apollo 17 in 1972. Credit: NASA
Now this portrait is now historicalan artifact. Fifty years later, on December 8, 2022, NASA captured a new image of Earth using the Deep Space Climate Observatory, which is located approximately 1.5 million km from the planet.
Scientists compared both imagesat the University of Portsmouth conference "The Whole Earth: The Blue Marble over 50 years". Since 1972, the planet has changed noticeably and the picture shows the effects of climate change over the last 50 years.
The Antarctic ice sheet has noticeably decreased in size, although major losses of the Larsen Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula are not visible in this particular image.
New NASA photo taken December 8, 2022. Credit: DSCOVR/NASA
Although it is difficult to distinguish on satellite imagessnow from the clouds, in the original photograph it can be seen on the Zagros and Central mountain ranges in Iran (north of the Persian Gulf). In the new image it is not there at all.
Most striking is the reduction in dark greenvegetation in the African tropics, especially in their northern part. The dark shadow of Lake Chad in the northern Sahara has diminished, and forest vegetation has retreated hundreds of kilometers to the south.
Also, Madagascar's once green landscape is now mostly brown. This indicates a reduction in forest cover.
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This material is republished under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article on The Conversation.