James River Floods In South Dakota
"These images show a portion of the James River in eastern South Dakota. The 2015 image depicts the river in a typical spring, while in the 2020 image, it is overflowing its banks. This and other sections of the river had been at flood level since spring 2019. (See Flooding Limits Planting in South Dakota.) In these false-color images, ice appears light blue and water is dark blue. The blue area merging with the James from below is Putney Slough, which also flooded."
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.