Stratum
Onekotan, Kuril Islands, from the International Space Station
Earth & Ocean Film Archive

Short films of the Earth changing, to be watched closely

Stratum is a small, selected set of public-domain films made by NASA, most of them from satellite data. Each one shows a single process on the physical Earth: a river cutting off its own meander, a glacier leaving a lake behind, a storm organising over warm water. Nobody narrates and nothing is added to the picture. Every film has one caption saying what you are seeing and when, and a short note on what to look for.

It is meant for teachers who want a minute of real footage to start a lesson, for students, and for anyone curious about how the planet moves. Every film is free to watch and to download.

Start with a series How the archive is made
Onekotan, Kuril Islands, from the International Space Station. NASA / JSC, iss071e046421.

Start here

All series

The films are short, and most of them make more sense next to another. A series puts a few of them in an order, with a paragraph on why they belong together. These are the first three films of each.

Series · 7 films · 1 min 50 s in all

Forty years in four seconds

Landsat satellites have photographed the same ground, from the same orbit, for decades. Put one frame per year end to end and a landscape that looks fixed starts to move. These seven films are built that way. Most run for only a few seconds, so play each one on a loop and pause on the first and last frames; the difference between them is the whole story.

The whole series, in order
Series · 4 films · 3 min 28 s in all

The sea has a shape

Sea level sounds like a single number. Measured from orbit, it turns out to be a surface with hills and hollows tens of metres apart, small bulges that come and go with the heat in the water, and a slow rise underneath everything. None of this can be seen from a beach. Each of these films makes one part of it visible.

The whole series, in order
Series · 4 films · 4 min 23 s in all

A storm, start to finish

Weather satellites photograph the same half of the planet every few minutes, so a storm can be followed from the first loose cluster of clouds to the moment it reaches land. No single film here shows a whole storm. Put together, three different storms cover the stages one after another.

The whole series, in order
Series · 3 films · 1 min 59 s in all

Aftermath

Eruptions and landslides happen in minutes. What follows them is slower, and that is what these films record. Each one starts at a sudden event and then watches what it leaves behind, at a different distance in time.

The whole series, in order

Collections

All collections

The same films, grouped by subject instead of by argument.

Volcanic Earth

Eruptions, lava fields and the slow return of life to blasted ground.

Deep Water

The shape of the sea surface, the heat beneath it, and how both are changing.

Strata & Time

Rivers, glaciers and coastlines, seen one year per frame.

Weather Systems

Storms, sea ice and the atmosphere in motion, from geostationary orbit.

Recently added

All 17 films