1. Home

2010 Landslide in Gansu, China

Aerial photo of 2010 landslide in Gansu, China
Image Caption
Around midnight on August 8, 2010, a violent surge of loosened earth roared down mountain slopes and slammed into quietly sleeping neighborhoods in Zhouqu County in Gansu, China.

The catastrophic mudslides—the deadliest in decades according to state media—buried some areas under as much as 23 feet (7 meters) of suffocating sludge. 1,765 people died. Property damages totaled an estimated $759 million. Cutting from right to left, this detailed image, from DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-2 satellite, shows the largest slide in the lower part of the city on August 10, 2010.

Image Credit: Digital Globe, DigitalGlobe usage policy

TRMM at 15: The Reign of Rain

Submitted by JacobAdmin on
Video Embed

When it rains it pours, goes the saying, and for the last 15 years, the data on tropical rainfall have poured in. NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) was launched on Nov. 27, 1997, and for the last decade and a half has enabled precipitation science that has had far reaching applications across the globe.

Heavy Rain Brings Flooding to Central and Northern Italy

Beginning this past weekend, parts of central and northern Italy received several days of heavy rain as an upper-level trough situated over western Europe down through the Iberian Peninsula in conjunction with a persistent area of low pressure at the surface over the northern coast of Africa brought a steady flow of warm, moist, unstable air northeastward across the country from the western Mediterranean. A stationary frontal boundary draped across the northern third of the Italian Peninsula provided the focus for showers and storms in that part of the country. The rains caused flooding in

Core Observatory Enters TVAC Chamber

(ambient audio only) On Tuesday Nov. 13, 2012, the GPM observatory moved from the clean room to the thermal vacuum chamber. The spacecraft, wrapped in protective blankets, made the short trip by crane across the testing facility where it was then lowered into the 40-foot test chamber. On Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2012, the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission Core Observatory began thermal vacuum testing at NASA's Goddard Space flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Thermal vacuum testing is part of GPM's environmental test program to ensure that the satellite is ready for the harsh conditions of
Subscribe to