Cyclone Nargis and Myanmar floods seen from space

Envisat captures Cyclone Nargis making its way across the Bay of Bengal just south of Myanmar on May 1, 2008, with its Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument working in... Click here for more information.

Envisat captured Cyclone Nargis making its way across the Bay of Bengal just south of Myanmar on 1 May 2008. The cyclone hit the coastal region and ripped through the heart of Myanmar on Saturday, devastating the country.

On 4 May, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) asked the International Charter on 'Space and Major Disasters' for support. The initiative, referred to as ‘The Charter’, was founded in October 2000 by ESA, the French space agency (CNES) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). It is aimed at providing satellite data free of charge to those affected by disasters anywhere in the world.