Start Date: End Date: Published Date Data Date
Data acquired March 19 - 19, 2003 1450 x 1100 421 KB - JPEG
Data acquired March 19 - 19, 2003 2900 x 2200 2 MB - JPEG
Data acquired March 19 - 19, 2003 5800 x 4400 4 MB - JPEG
Western Europe, from southern England in the north to Spain in the south and from France in the west to Austria in the east, is beginning to show signs of spring in this true-color Terra MODIS image acquired on the last day of winter, March 19, 2003. Though temperatures have remained relatively cool in the region, snows have melted from all but the mountain slopes. Paris reached a high of 52 degrees Fahrenheit (F) on this day, while Berlin´s high was a cooler 47 degrees F. London, at the image´s top, hit the middle mark at 50 degrees F, while Turin in Italy, the westernmost city of the Po Flood Plain on the southeastern slope of the Alps, reached a high of 55 degrees F.
Also shown in the image are a few scattered fires. MODIS can detect thermal anomalies as small as 30 meters square (depending on the temperature of the anomaly; smaller fires can be detected if the heat is more intense, while lower-temperature fires have to be larger to be detected). The fires in this image are marked in red. To learn more about how MODIS detects fires, please read the Fire article on the Earth Observatory's website.
Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC
Published March 20, 2003 Data acquired March 19 - 19, 2003