WATCH: NASA video allows you to see how Earth has changed in the last 20 years
NASA have condensed all of the world’s weather over the course of the last 18 years into a two minute video which highlights just how much the Earth has changed.
The fascinating video, based on data from NASA’s Worldview Data, illustrates the effects of climate change and extreme weather patterns from 2000 through to current day.
The extraordinary footage was captured by NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites, which launched in 1999 and 2002.
Some of the footage shows ice breaking away from the Arctic which will lead to climate change, the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the subsequent flooding and a huge waft of smoke drifting towards mainland Europe from Iceland when the Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted causing travel chaos for the continent.
Santiago Gassó, an associate research scientist with NASA’s Goddard Earth Sciences Technology And Research program at Morgan State University, Baltimore, explained the process.
GETTY
He said: “In the '80s and '90s, if you wanted to look at, say, clouds off the coast of California, you had to figure out the time of year when it was best to look at these clouds, then place a data request for a specific window of days when you thought the satellite overflew the area.
“You would get a physical tape with these images and have to put this into the processing system. Only then would you know if the image was usable.
“This process used to take from days to weeks.”
However, thanks to the imagery from Worldview, this can be achieved almost instantly.
GETTY
Mr Gassó said: "Now, you can look at images for days, weeks and even years in a matter of minutes in Worldview, immediately find the images you need and download them for use.
"It's fantastic!"