Water vapour map. Aqua satellite map of water vapour in the atmosphere over the oceans. The amount of water vapour (which forms clouds) is colour-code

---

Water vapour map. Aqua satellite map of water vapour in the atmosphere over the oceans. The amount of water vapour (which forms clouds) is colour-coded, from light blue (least) to dark blue (most). The small yellow areas correspond to areas of high precipitation. Snow and ice are yellow and deserts are dark green. Other land is black. Aqua is a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese space agency NASDA. It was launched on 4th May 2002 as part of NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) of satellites. It will study the water cycle and global temperatures. This image was taken by Aqua's Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) between 2nd-4th June 2002.

---

Size: 7711px × 3375px
Photo credit: © NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: advanced, amsr-, aqua, atmosphere, atmospheric, climate, cloud, clouds, continental, cylindrical, earth, earths, eos, ese, global, imagery, map, microwave, nasa, nasda, observation, ocean, oceanic, precipitation, projection, radiometer, rain, satellite, scanning, science, sciences, space, vapour, water, weather, world