A rainbow of colors depicts the average temperature of the top millimeter of the Earth's land areas over a nine year period. To create this map (click to enlarge), researchers used measurements from NASA's Terra satellite gathered between 2000 December 1 and 2008 December 31 under clear sky conditions. In this view, yellow shows the warmest temperatures (up to 45° C) and light blue shows the coldest temperatures (down to -25°C). Terra was launched from Vandenberg AFB in 1999 December. Image courtesy of NASA