Credit: NASA image courtesy LANCE MODIS Rapid Response.
Heavy rains transformed Australia's landscape, as show in these two NASA satellite images of floodplains in southwestern Queensland. The first image was taken on September 26, 2009. By the time of the second image, on March 26, 2011, so much rain had been driven over Australia instead of falling on the ocean that global sea levels temporarily dropped. (Image taken with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite.)