--- title: See How the Earth Has Changed Over the Past 20 Years in This NASA Timelapse | TIME description: A new 20-year NASA timelapse taken from space shows in just a few minutes how life on Earth shapes the planet year by year. canonical: https://time.com/video/7zh7Symi/ og:title: See How the Earth Has Changed Over the Past 20 Years in This NASA Timelapse og:description: A new 20-year NASA timelapse taken from space shows in just a few minutes how life on Earth shapes the planet year by year. og:url: https://time.com/video/7zh7Symi/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/7zh7Symi/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: See How the Earth Has Changed Over the Past 20 Years in This NASA Timelapse twitter:description: A new 20-year NASA timelapse taken from space shows in just a few minutes how life on Earth shapes the planet year by year. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/7zh7Symi/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # See How the Earth Has Changed Over the Past 20 Years in This NASA Timelapse > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: See How the Earth Has Changed Over the Past 20 Years in This NASA Timelapse [Watch (HLS stream): See How the Earth Has Changed Over the Past 20 Years in This NASA Timelapse](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/7zh7Symi.m3u8) (3:14)  _Published 2017-11-17. A new 20-year NASA timelapse taken from space shows in just a few minutes how life on Earth shapes the planet year by year._ --- Jul 27, 2023 11:00 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [NASA: A Year in the Life of Earths CO2](/video/TPdLINk3/) ### NASA: A Year in the Life of Earths CO2 [New Earth-like Planets Discovered By NASA's Kepler Telescope](/video/fCApPc72/) ### New Earth-like Planets Discovered By NASA's Kepler Telescope [Watch Astronaut's 4K Timelapse of the Earth](/video/Vfsc1DqA/) ### Watch Astronaut's 4K Timelapse of the Earth --- ## Transcript [ BLANK_AUDIO ] NASA has a fleet of satellites that is designed to look at the planet, different aspects of the planet, the atmosphere, land, oceans, and the ice And so on this particular one what we're seeing is compilation of 20 years of data from three satellites that specialize in looking at vegetation over both land and the ocean. So what you're seeing is the changes in seasons, from winter through winter over 20 years. So as you can see over land, you'll see the changes in green which is intuitive when you have for example, the rainy season you have more green. In the tropics, and in the similar way in the oceans we have these tiny, microscopic plants that are called phytoplankton, which by the way, produce about half of the oxygen you are breathing right now. And similarly, over the seasons, they change. Change. When we can see changes over time we can see how the planet is reacting to, for example, global warming, okay. And we can see in great detail some areas like you're showing right now. We can see this fantastic Dynamics that we see over the ocean and we can slowly how phytoplankton's and how plants over land change between seasons and also throughout this very long period of 20 years. We due to climate change we are having an increase in temperature over a particular region and this region gets Drier, well what you see is an increase in the amount of deserts and for example over the Gulf of Mexico is due to an increase in the amount of rain. For example, we have more river flow than we can see how the the river plume from the Mississippi, which we are looking at right now, gets bigger and goes into the Gulf of Mexico. And these things can have effects over the marina vital lands. In land we have grasses and we have shrubs and we have trees. With the ocean we also have different types of phytoplankton, okay. And the phytoplankton species they can change from on to the other. BAsically, that changes the base of the food web. So, it's basically like changing your salad bar, okay. Not everybody likes broccoli well not all little fish likes All types of phyto plankton. So one of the things that we're surely seeing is because of climate change, this distribution of species, the type of species that we have in the ocean, they can be changing. And we need to be able to look at these things from space. We have a new mission that it is called PACE, that will alow us to do exactly that. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Right now what you're seeing is South America, you see that big big blue area, is basically, these are deserts that we have in the ocean, right? We have deserts over land. We have deserts in the ocean. Places with very very little Are vital plankton. Well those seems to be getting a little bit bigger with time because the oceans are getting warmer. The message that we wanted to convey is that we have only one planet where we live, is a breathing planet, is a planet that is a. It's alive and we're looking at it very carefully and we're have to take care of it because its the only home that we have for the forseeable future and it's a delicate place. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"See How the Earth Has Changed Over the Past 20 Years in This NASA Timelapse","description":"A new 20-year NASA timelapse taken from space shows in just a few minutes how life on Earth shapes the planet year by year.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/7zh7Symi/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2017-11-17T21:46:13.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/7zh7Symi.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/7zh7Symi/","duration":"PT3M14S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/7zh7Symi/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```