Original subtitles

From the blackness of space our home is a blue planet.

But now satellite cameras

capture a kaleidoscope...

..of extraordinary colours...

..surprising...

..and constantly changing...

..created by natural phenomena...

..by animals...

..and by people.

These colours are revealing new insight into the health

of our fragile planet...

CLICKS AND CHIRPS

..transforming our understanding

of our colourful home.

The aurora...

..our planet's greatest natural spectacle.

Energy from the sun interacts with our atmosphere...

..creating colourful light.

In the Arctic,

ribbons of green flicker overhead.

But from space,

the aurora is even more spectacular.

It was only by looking down on the aurora

that we discovered it forms rings around the Earth's poles.

The gentle ribbons become towering vertical streaks

hundreds of kilometres high.

And scientists observed a surprising colour.

300km up in the atmosphere...

..clearly visible from orbit...

..the lights turn from green...

..to red...

..as solar particles react with oxygen.

The view from space reveals the sheer scale

and power of this interaction

between our planet and the sun.

Satellite cameras are giving us a brand-new perspective

on many of the Earth's most extraordinary natural spectacles.

It's spring and, off the coast of Alaska,

the ocean has been transformed.

Vast swirls of green and turquoise...

..hundreds of kilometres across.

A plankton bloom, shaped by ocean currents.

Despite their size, these blooms are created

by some of the tiniest life forms on our planet.

Microscopic plant-like organisms have survived through the winter.

And now they use the warming waters and spring sunshine to multiply...

..in their millions...

..transforming the ocean on a scale that can only be seen...

..from space.

Many different animals are dependent on these blooms for their survival.

This sea lion mother has given birth.

Her pup is just hours old.

Spring means a baby boom...

..coinciding with the plankton blooms offshore.

Plankton feed shoals of millions of herring.

A feast for mothers with hungry pups.

But these blooms form off the coast...

..and crossing open water is risky.

The sea lions stay in close formation, each keeping a lookout.

Swimming away from the group is dangerous.

Killer whales.

This pod are sea lion hunters and time their arrival with the bloom.

Sea lions have a powerful bite...

..but the killer whales' surprise attacks aim to disable it

so it cannot fight back.

Stunned and immobilised, there is no chance of escape.

Fishing in these seas is dangerous.

But it's worth the risk.

The bloom will provide these mothers

with enough fish to support their hungry pups.

All across the world's oceans,

plankton blooms attract animals in huge numbers.

In the Aleutian Islands, thousands of shearwaters

launch a surface attack

on vast shoals of fish...

..while below, humpback whales gorge on up to one and a half tonnes a day.

And in the shallow seas of South Africa...

..plankton feed millions of sardines...

..attracting one of the largest gathering of predators...

CLICKS AND CHIRPS

..anywhere on Planet Earth.

But these blooms don't just support ocean food chains.

The tiny plant-like organisms also produce oxygen.

By studying the scale of these blooms...

..scientists now calculate

they create up to 50% of the planet's oxygen.

And so it's not just forests

but these oceanic swirls of colour that are the lungs of our world.

From space, we can monitor the surface of our planet

and see where life thrives.

But these cameras also reveal worrying signs

that the natural world is under threat.

In Greenland, the white of the icecap is spotted with blue.

The ice is melting.

Temperatures are rising due to climate change.

Rivers of turquoise meltwater are crisscrossing further...

..and further over the ice.

These rivers flow into depressions on the icecap...

..each one up to seven square kilometres of sapphire blue.

Scientists have combined satellite images of these lakes

taken over the summer months.

They fill and empty again and again.

Every year, billion of tonnes of water

drain off the icecap and into the sea.

The Greenland ice sheet may soon become

the largest contributor to rising sea levels.

260 billion tonnes of ice

are lost every year.

Hundreds of blue lakes that tell us the icecap...

..is shrinking faster than we've ever known before.

Satellite cameras are revolutionising the way

scientists study the natural world.

The tiniest splash of colour...

..can reveal animals in Earth's most remote landscapes.

In Antarctica...

..a speck of red.

Blood on the ice...

..where a Weddell seal has just given birth.

The South Atlantic seas surrounding Bird Island

are so treacherous that satellites are the safest way to study them.

Scientists are looking for these tiny white spots...

BUBBLING BIRD CALLS

..each a vulnerable, wandering albatross.

And on the Antarctic Danger Islands...

..patches of pink rock have led to the discovery

of one of the largest penguin colonies on Earth.

The activity of millions of Adelie penguins

has worn away the vegetation completely.

Scientists now use colour to estimate just how many penguins

live on these remote islands

without ever having to set foot there.

In June, the lakeshores of East Africa are flecked with pink.

Flocks of thousands of lesser flamingos.

They gather here to find a mate...

..which is a flamboyant affair.

The flamingos perform elaborate dances...

..which help each bird to decide on a partner...

..although it's still not fully understood how they make their choice.

It's not easy to find your one in a million.

But trying to stand out from the crowd...

..isn't the answer.

Flamingos are not born pink.

Their feathers are dyed by a red chemical found in the algae that they eat...

..holding their breath as they reach for food in the deeper water.

Throughout the year, these flamboyant flocks move from remote lake to lake

in search of food.

Tracking them from the ground is very difficult.

But, from space, scientists can now spot the pink as they arrive on lakeshores...

..monitoring their movements and their numbers.

But not all the colours we can see from space are natural.

Human activity can be just as eye-catching.

In Massachusetts,

millions of cranberries

are harvested from flooded ponds.

In the deserts of Utah,

bright blue mineral pools...

..full of potash, used to make fertiliser.

In the Gobi Desert,

millions of red-hot chillies

dry in the sun.

The Bay Area of San Francisco is like a rainbow.

Water in evaporation ponds -

each colour a different stage in the production of salt.

In spring, the fields of Holland are painted with barcode stripes.

Millions of tulips.

60% of all the world's tulips are harvested from these fields.

Within a few weeks, all the flowers and their colours are gone.

And every spring in south-west China...

..a vast area becomes bright yellow...

..as millions of rapeseed flowers...

..bloom.

These flowers will eventually produce almost 20%

of all the world's rapeseed oil.

A colour transformation on such a grand scale

that the only way to capture it in its entirety...

..is from space.

Mr Dai and his son are nomads.

They've travelled across China just in time for the bloom.

But they're not here for the oil.

They've come to make honey.

But the weather is not on their side.

The view from space is almost completely white.

Thick cloud is blocking the sun.

THUNDER RUMBLES

It's just too cold for the bees to fly.

With a chill in the air...

..these bees aren't going anywhere.

And time is running out.

In two weeks, the rapeseed farmers

will spray pesticides over the fields...

..making it a dangerous place for the bees.

They must move on before the spraying starts.

All they can do is sit and wait for the sun.

After three grey days, the clouds finally part...

..and one and a half million bees head out to work.

HE LAUGHS

They must visit two million flowers to make just one jar of honey.

The bees drink the sugary nectar

from the flowers they visit...

..and transfer it to the hive, where it becomes honey.

Food for the long winter months.

But bees are more than just honey makers.

They are one of the world's most important crop pollinators...

..helping plants produce fruits, seeds and vegetables.

But now pesticides are contributing

to a worldwide decline in the number of honeybees,

and their future is under threat.

Mr Dai's window of opportunity is short...

..but the bees have been hard at work.

He has plenty of honey.

HE LAUGHS

And not a moment too soon.

The fields will be sprayed in two days.

It's time to move on.

The effect of the passing seasons

can be seen right across the Earth's surface.

Rain transforms a Californian desert.

In New England, autumn changes the landscape from green to russet red.

And heavy snowfall covers all of the British Isles.

In some places, these seasonal changes are so dramatic...

..that surviving them is a challenge.

Each winter, these Japanese islands turn from green...

..to bright white.

Some of the deepest snowfall anywhere on Earth.

It takes powerful machines to clear the mountain passes...

..creating walls of snow up to 20 metres high.

For one forest species...

..such a complete change in the landscape

requires an equally radical survival strategy.

A solitary squirrel.

At just half the size of a grey squirrel...

..this female is small enough to fit in the palm of a hand.

She spends most of the year alone in the treetops.

Being light allows her to reach nutritious buds

at the very tips of the branches.

But at this time of year, there's very little to eat.

And the deep snow makes it hard to get around.

But she has a strategy.

Flight.

Siberian flying squirrels can glide up to 50 metres from tree to tree

in search of food.

But even with this useful adaptation,

it's a struggle to consume enough calories to keep warm.

For many years, scientists wondered

how this tiny animal copes in the harsh winter months...

..until they discovered that this squirrel...

..changes its behaviour.

Throughout much of the year,

Siberian flying squirrels are solitary animals.

But now she needs extra body heat.

And another female in her territory...

..is her chance.

The new female is welcomed into her den.

They will spend the winter together, sharing body heat to survive the cold...

..parting ways when the island once again transforms.

The passing seasons

have been changing the colours of our planet for millennia.

But off the coast of Australia...

..satellites are monitoring a more sudden and alarming change.

The Great Barrier Reef.

At over 2,000 kilometres long,

the sheer scale of this habitat

makes satellites the best way to appreciate it.

It's thought that the reef has hugged the coastline of east Australia

for thousands of years.

But now it's changing.

This is an image of the reef in 2016.

A year later, its colour is gone.

Earth's changing climate is warming the waters,

affecting the reef...

..and bleaching its colour.

Healthy reef coral is made up of three different elements.

A hard limestone skeleton...

..soft coral polyps that live inside the skeleton...

..and microscopic algae that gives the coral its beautiful colour.

But the waters surrounding the reef are now getting warmer.

And this can cause the tiny, colourful algae in the coral...

..to become toxic.

The corals become stressed by these toxins...

..swelling up to three times their normal size...

..before ejecting a cloud of the tiny, coloured algae

out of their bodies.

In just two years, these beautiful coral gardens...

..lost their colour.

The coral becomes overgrown by algae.

..and then crumbles.

On the northern reefs, more than 80% of the coral

has bleached due to warming waters.

This has tragic consequences for the thousands of animals

that make the reef their home...

..including one that's only just been discovered.

Every winter, visitors emerge from the deep blue.

CLICKS AND CHIRPS

Dwarf minke whales...

..first discovered here in the 1980s.

Each whale has its own unique markings...

HIGH, EXTENDED CALL

..and a very distinct and unusual song.

REPEATED CHIRP

It's this calf's first visit to the reef...

..brought here by her mother.

At eight metres,

the adult whales are one of the largest animals on the reef.

But, despite their size, we still know very little about them.

It seems they come to the reef to socialise.

And scientists are now using satellite tagging technology...

..to follow the whales' movements.

They slowly head south...

..before disappearing into deeper waters.

But if the reef changes,

we may lose our chance to learn more about these mysterious animals.

In 2017, two thirds of the reef suffered bleaching.

That's more than 1,500km of coral.

If the oceans continue to warm at this rate,

then the coral will struggle to recover,

and one of the world's most important and colourful habitats...

..will be lost.

Human activity is changing our planet.

This is never more apparent than at night.

Now even the darkest nights glow with the light of our cities and towns.

The Thames snakes black through the centre of London.

Lights hug the bay of Tokyo...

..while China's largest city, Shanghai, glows bright.

In some places, even the darkest oceans are lit by mysterious colours.

Blue lights in the straits of Taiwan...

..a huge trail of green in the waters off Japan...

..and off the coast of South America, a strange, glowing shape...

..hundreds of bright spots

lined up along the very edge of Argentina's waters.

The lights from a fleet of squid fishing boats...

..gathered here for an ocean bonanza.

Every night across the world's oceans,

millions of squid rise from the deep to feed near the surface...

..navigating upwards from the dark...

..toward the light of the moon.

Here in Argentina,

fishermen take advantage by flooding the ocean with powerful electric light...

..mimicking the moon

and drawing the squid to their boats.

Fishing this way is permitted in international waters.

But overfishing is leading to many species becoming endangered.

The Argentine coastguard police these waters.

Practising nightly drills means they are always ready to intercept illegal boats.

It's a huge challenge for Captain Carlos Apablaza.

There can be as many as 400 boats here, across a vast area of ocean.

They are all required to carry a satellite beacon

so the captain can keep track of them.

A new satellite update comes in.

A rogue fishing boat has turned off its satellite beacon

in an attempt to go off-grid.

It was last seen heading towards Argentinian waters.

ALARM BELL RINGS

Captain Apablaza sets a course to intercept the rogue vessel.

But it looks as if the boat has also turned off its fishing lights...

..attempting to sneak over the border unseen, where the squid are plentiful.

In the night, there's a real risk of collision.

HORN BLARES

But it looks like the fishing boat has escaped them.

Suddenly, their luck changes.

A newly updated satellite picture has relocated the rogue vessel.

By analysing photographs taken from space...

..it's now possible to spot the lights of a single boat away from the fleet.

Captain Apablaza orders his crew to issue a warning.

This is Argentine coastguard ship Prefecto Derbes calling you. Over.

MESSAGE OVER RADIO

Senor capitan, informo se avista...

This is often enough to persuade rogue vessels

to change course away from Argentinian waters and back to the fleet.

Satellite technology is more important than ever

to help combat illegal fishing...

..and protect our oceans.

The view from space has forever changed the way we see our planet.

Satellites give us a new perspective on its greatest...

..and most beautiful spectacles...

..allowing us to make new discoveries.

We can watch landscapes change through the seasons...

..and marvel in the scale of their transformations.

Now satellites are a powerful tool

with which to monitor the health of our planet...

..see where life is thriving...

..but, crucially, where it is under threat.

And as we have a greater impact,

never has it been more important to protect our colourful home.

Next time...

We are changing our planet.

As cities grow...

..natural resources shrink...

..and Earth's surface changes faster than ever in human history...

..only from space...

...can we fully appreciate the impact we're having...

..on our fragile home.

The Open University has produced a poster, exploring Earth from Space.

To order your free copy, call...

Or go to...

..and follow the links to the Open University.