Featured SARflix Movies

SARflix are time series animations of SAR images acquired at all weather conditions and times of days, day or night. Because it’s SAR, the imaging conditions remain constant throughout the year providing for fascinating monitoring opportunities of our dynamic planet. Earth Big Data software, harnessing cloud data and compute resources, allows us to generate these SARflix movies from hundreds of satellite frames in about 10 minutes to share with the public.

See all movies at SARflix

Breakup of the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica

Watch the breaking off of enormous icebergs and see them drift away in this timelapse movie of Sentinel-1 observations of the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Major breakups happened in 2021, 2023, and the latest breaking off started in May 2024.

100 m resolution from Sentinel-1’s IW Mode

200m resolution movie from Sentinel-1’s EW Mode

References:
https://news.mongabay.com/2023/12/perus-crackdown-on-illegal-gold-mining-a-success-but-only-briefly-study-shows/
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2024/04/02/1231873144/gold-mining-reduced-this-amazon-rainforest-to-a-moonscape-now-miners-are-restor

Illegal Gold Mining in the Madre de Dios Region in Peru

Like a snake eating into the rainforest, massive llegal gold mining operations can be seen in this movie of Sentinel-1 observations every 12 days from 2016 to 2021

References:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150880/antarcticas-brunt-ice-shelf-finally-breaks
https://phys.org/news/2024-05-brunt-ice-shelf-antarctica-calves.html
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x90zti6

Draining of the Kakhovka Reservoir in Ukraine

After the failure of the Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine on June 6th, 2023, the rapid draining of the massive storage reservoir that supported the irrigation of the wheat basket of the world in southern Ukraine is seen in this movie of Sentinel-1 data acquired every 12 days from January 2020 to May 2024.

References:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01397-5
https://www.science.org/content/article/ukrainian-scientists-tally-grave-environmental-consequences-kakhovka-dam-disaster

The Grand Ethiopian Reservoir Dam

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is a gravity dam on the Blue Nile River in Ethiopia. The reservoir behind the dam started filling in Summer of 2020.

References:
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-controversy-over-the-grand-ethiopian-renaissance-dam/
https://eros.usgs.gov/earthshots/grand-ethiopian-renaissance-dam-ethiopia

Quick guide on movie types:

hh/vv AMP: Amplitudes of horizontal or vertical like-polarized SAR backscatter
hv/vh AMP: Amplitudes of cross-polarized SAR backscatter
PCT 8bit: A 8-bit color-enhanced version of a red/green/blue representation of like-polarized, cross-polarized, and the ratio of like- and cross-polarized SAR backscatter amplitudes (indicated by "LCR" movie title)