Beach Erosion Near Freeport, Texas
"These images show an area just south of Freeport, Texas, where beach is being lost at a rate of nearly 49 feet (15 meters) per year along an 11-mile (17-kilometer) stretch. It is one of the largest erosive hotspots in the world. A team of researchers from the Netherlands used Landsat satellite data to track changes in sandy beaches worldwide from 1984 to 2016. They found that 24 percent of the beaches eroded more than 20 inches (0.5 meter) per year, including more than a third of those classified as protected. Some 28 percent of sandy beaches grew and 48 percent remained stable."
yep....noticed that too.
Um, no I didn't notice that at all. One effort shows data from 2004, mainly due to 2004 being such a major year for the Muir Glacier. The rest are pretty recent. 20% are from 2020. 75% from the last 5 years.
Unless you meant that any remote sensing data is from the past, even if taken seconds ago.
Satellite data usually takes a little while to be made public due to processing requirements (e.g. ICESat-2 was launched in 2018, but some higher level products haven't been produced yet.) Then researchers need time to figure out what the data is actually showing.
Also, regarding the images being a few years old, that’s obviously for security reasons. Satellite images made available to the public are never current for obvious reasons.