Technology has allowed us to see this first-hand, and the results are actually pretty mesmerizing. Don't tell my editor this, but I've been looking at these images released by NASA for way longer than necessary to write this article. I can't help myself — seeing the then-and-now pics put things into a perspective I'd like to explore.
Let's check out the images together. Are these the kind of changes you'd expect to see? Share your thoughts in the COMMENTSon Facebook.
Once upon a time, this was the fourth largest lake in the world.
In 1960, the Soviet Union started diverting water from this Aral Sea for cotton and other crop productions in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. By 2000, the sea had already split into two sections. Fourteen years later, it hardly looks like a sea at all. The drastic change has made the climate here colder in the winter and hotter and drier in the summer.
This is what it looks like before and after an avalanche disaster.
This is in Tibet's Aru Range on June 24, 2016 and again on July 21 of the same year. The reason for the collapse is still unknown, but it's now one of the largest in recorded history.
Arctic Sea ice, the difference between 1984 and 2016.
You can see the older, thicker, white ice decline here.
Fire is not a force to be reckoned with.
Here are the ongoing ramifications of the Fort McMurray forest fire in Canada. Just one month later, the planet looks like its bleeding in places that were once green.
This is Lake Cachuma in Southern California, 2013 and 2016.
In between these years, a drought seriously changed the terrain. You can see the differences in the lake size and color of the surrounding landscape.
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