Since news stories are breaking about extreme glacier
melting on Mt. Everest and the Himalaya’s, (see attached story) here is an
image of the day on Snow in the Himalayas.
Notes: The name
Himalaya means “abode of snow” in Sanskrit. On November 20, 2015, the Moderate
Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured
this image of fresh snow along the Himalayan range in central Asia.
The moisture for snowfall in this part of the range is
delivered primarily by the summer monsoon. The mountains form a natural barrier
that blocks monsoonal moisture from reaching the Tibetan Plateau to the north.
This makes the plains south of the mountains green with vegetation while much
of the Plateau is brown and comparatively barren.
This range contains some of the world’s tallest peaks. Mount
Everest, for example, is just one of nine peaks in the area that stand taller
than 8,000 meters (26,247 feet) in elevation.
Haze over India is visible in the southwest corner of the
image. The haze likely contained smoke from fires set in preparation for crop
sowing.
Image Facts
Satellite: Terra
Date Acquired: 11/20/2015
Resolutions: 1km (867 KB), 500m (3.1 MB), 250m (7.5 MB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit: Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team,
NASA GSFC
