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Google Earth now has global Landsat and Sentinel 2 data from 1985 to 2016

November 29, 2016

Thank you for GEB reader Jonah for being the first to let us know. Google has added yearly global mosaics using Landsat and Sentinel 2 data going back to 1985. Google has long had these mosaics on Google Earth Engine which also provides a ‘Timelapse’ tool. As of this writing, the Google Earth Engine timelapse only goes up to 2012, but that will likely be updated too.

To see the mosaics, simply zoom out a bit and switch to ‘historical imagery’.

We plan to create tools to animate the new data, but that may take a few days.

Here are a few ‘before and afters’ showing changes between 1985 and 2016.

before
after

The Amazon, 1985 vs 2016

before
after

Dubai, 1985 vs 2016

before
after

The region around Shenzhen, China, 1985 vs 2016

Note that the new data is created by blending all Landsat/Sentinel 2 data for a whole year to remove clouds and snow cover. The result is that changes that happen on timescales less than a year, such as seasonal changes, will not be visible.

Google has not (as of this writing) updated the historical imagery layer with all the high resolution imagery that has been added since June 2016.

There is one disadvantage to the new data – it is much harder to find historical imagery, as you need to zoom in very close to the earth to see the high resolution historical imagery.

About Timothy Whitehead

Timothy has been using Google Earth since 2004 when it was still called Keyhole before it was renamed Google Earth in 2005 and has been a huge fan ever since. He is a programmer working for Red Wing Aerobatx and lives in Cape Town, South Africa.

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Filed Under: Site News Tagged With: landsat, sentinel

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PLEASE NOTE: Google Earth Blog is no longer writing regular posts. As a result, we are not accepting new comments or questions about Google Earth. If you have a question, use the official Google Earth and Maps Forums or the Google Earth Community Forums.

Comments

  1. haflaa says

    November 29, 2016 at 7:04 am

    Maldives only has data from around 2000

    • gefan says

      November 29, 2016 at 3:46 pm

      try zooming out or restart google earth if you used it for a while

  2. Jonah says

    November 29, 2016 at 10:04 am

    Correction: it hasn’t been updated since June 2016, not 2015

    • Timothy Whitehead says

      November 29, 2016 at 2:50 pm

      Thank you for catching that. I have corrected it.

    • Jonah says

      November 29, 2016 at 3:51 pm

      It feels like it has been over a year though

  3. hefan says

    November 29, 2016 at 3:39 pm

    Actually, the new imagery is already in the layer. Go to a place like Manhatten Island and go to 9/7/2015. When you zoom in it will change to the image from 6/26/2016

  4. Jibrin gambo says

    December 1, 2016 at 12:52 am

    So can I download this data

    • Timothy Whitehead says

      December 1, 2016 at 4:25 am

      Not from Google Earth. I am not sure if Google Earth Engine allows it, but they do allow you to work with it. The original data comes from publicly available sources and is royalty free.

  5. Soumyajit Ghosh says

    December 1, 2016 at 2:15 am

    camn u tell me that this tool am i useing in the Google earth..recently? and another question to you that is it possible to install my laptop ? is it new version of Google earth?

  6. tolga says

    December 1, 2016 at 1:00 pm

    I was imagining a software like this before it was realesed



PLEASE NOTE: Google Earth Blog is no longer writing regular posts. As a result, we are not accepting new comments or questions about Google Earth. If you have a question, use the official Google Earth and Maps Forums or the Google Earth Community Forums.

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