Earth 'Breathes' in Amazing Time-Lapse Video from Space

By Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer | November 20, 2017 12:21pm ET

For 20 years, NASA satellites have monitored Earth from space, tracking the pulse of life in seasonal patterns as heat moves around the planet, sea ice grows and shrinks, and vegetation blooms and recedes on the continents.

And now, data gathered by a fleet of satellites circling Earth since 1997 have been visualized as a breathtaking time-lapse video of our dynamic planet, capturing the most complete view to date of biology on a global scale, spanning two decades.

During warm months in each hemisphere, sea-ice cover near the poles declines and the lush green colors of emerging plant life spread in undulating waves over land, as more plants take up carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. In the oceans, microscopic phytoplankton swirl to form growing and shrinking clouds, likewise following seasonal cycles of growth that are visible to NASA satellites as subtle color changes in the water. [Earth Pictures: Iconic Images of Earth from Space]

"That's the Earth — that is it breathing every single day, changing with the seasons, responding to the sun, to the changing winds, ocean currents and temperatures," Gene Carl Feldman, an oceanographer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement.

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