NASA and USGS Earth-imaging satellite carrying the Operational Land Imager, used for moderate-resolution optical observation of the land surface.
Lacy Cotter-Vardeman says roughly 90% of her Lubbock County dryland cotton died in the 2026 drought. So far, her farm is the only evidence that this was a new kind of loss, worse than the crop abandonment of 2011 and 2022.
Reality
NC State satellite mapping shows North Carolina lost 21% of its coastal forest, about 64,220 hectares, between 1985 and 2021, mostly to rising seas. Measured per year, conversion to marsh, ghost forest and shrub after 2010 ran at about triple the earlier pace.
Reality
Passenger estimates for the two-day closure run above 300,000. The 1883 eruption that built this volcano killed about 35,000, almost all by tsunami, and that mechanism needs the edifice to collapse rather than the plume to climb.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishersReality
Above-average June rain and a very wet August in Western Australia's Murchison brought carpets of wildflowers that Landsat 8 caught in late August, in a before-and-after pair where the ground is greener and the flowers themselves go uncounted.
Reality
Lake Powell's surface read 3,517.24 feet on September 10, the lowest on record, after the Upper Colorado Basin's 2025-2026 snowpack came in thin and record warmth took more of it before the melt reached the river.
Reality
A small, routinely active volcano between Java and Sumatra produced a day of explosive eruption whose effects on flying and on air quality took several days to clear, and the flight tally in circulation comes from news reports.
Reality