NASA Earth Observations (NEO) has overhauled the look of its web site:
“NASA Earth Observations (NEO), has a new look and we invite you to try it out! Over 50 different global datasets are represented with daily, weekly, and monthly snapshots, and images are available in a variety of formats including JPEG, PNG, Google Earth, and GeoTIFF.”
The mission of NEO is to  “help you picture climate and environmental changes as they occur on our home planet. Here you can browse and download imagery of satellite data from NASA’s constellation of Earth Observing System satellites.”
What GIS data is available from NASA’s NEO web site?
Global geospatial data is available in a range of image and CSV files. Â Users can select the available time ranges (which can vary from a monthly, weekly, and daily options) Â
A slider below the image of the dataset allows the user to pick the year and the month to view. Â On the right are the download options. Â
The About the Dataset section allows users to select from three different types of descriptions: basic, intermediate, and advanced. Â The basic options provides a short and introductory overview of the dataset whereas the intermediate and advanced provide increasingly more complex explanations about the dataset as well as information about the satellite instruments used to collect the data. Â
The legend is downloadable as a Adobe Color Table file which provides a look up table to be used within Adobe Photoshop.
Atmosphere, energy, land, life, and ocean geospatial data sets
Data can be browsed by category: atmosphere, energy, land, life, and ocean. Â
Sea surface salinity geospatial data
Datasets available include the July 2013 release of Sea Surface Salinity. Â
Sea surface salinity refers to the amount of dissolved salt in the top layer of the ocean, typically the uppermost few meters. It is an important parameter in oceanography and climate science because changes in salinity can affect ocean circulation patterns and the global climate.
The dataset, available monthly, visualizes differences in salinity around the world.  The data is collected by the Aquarius instrument onboard the AQUARIUS/SAC-D satellite.
Changes in salinity can affect the density of seawater, which in turn affects the ocean’s circulation patterns.
Changes in sea surface salinity can also affect the exchange of heat and moisture between the ocean and the atmosphere, which can influence weather patterns and climate variability.
Geospatial data for fire activity
Satellites equipped with sensors can detect the heat signature of a fire and track its movements in real-time.
Monthly and daily fire data is available from MODIS (or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) which is an instrument aboard the Terra (EOS AM)and Aqua (EOS PM) satellites. Â
The data shows actively burning fires from around the world. Â
Over a one month period in July, the widespread activity of fires makes it easy to see the outline of the continents even without any other GIS data overlays.
Precipitation data
The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) was a joint project between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched in 1997 to study rainfall in the tropics. TRMM was equipped with a suite of instruments to measure precipitation, including a unique radar system that allowed for the detection of both rainfall and the vertical structure of storms.
Looking more like a painting, rainfall amounts measured by the Precipitation Radar, an instrument aboard the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (or TRMM), show color shading from pale green to turquoise to show increasing amounts of rainfall. TRMM provides a daily, nearly global sampling of precipitation between 35 degrees North and South Latitude.
