A map created by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) using a spaceborne weather radar built by the Japanese space agency NASDA. The Mission notes that “during the past few days (May 15-19, 2003) Tropical Cyclone 01B developed in the Indian Ocean and achieved hurricane status. The storm produced heavy rainfall in Sri Lanka, leading to flash flooding and a large loss of life there.”

This image, created by NASA’s MISR multi-angle, multispectral space-based imager, depicts the 26 December 2004 tsunami. NASA notes that “the initial tsunami waves resulting from the undersea earthquake that occurred at 00:58:53 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) on 26 December 2004 off the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, took a little over 2 hours to reach the teardrop-shaped island of Sri Lanka. Additional waves continued to arrive for many hours afterwards. At approximately 05:15 UTC, as NASA's Terra satellite passed overhead, the Multi-angle Imaging Spectro Radiometer (MISR) captured this image of deep ocean tsunami waves about 30-40 kilometres from Sri Lanka's southwestern coast. The waves are made visible because of changes in the sea-surface slope on the reflected sun glint pattern. Since the greatest impact of the tsunami was generally in an east-west direction, the havoc caused by the tsunami along the southwestern shores of Sri Lanka was not as severe as along the eastern coast, though there was still substantial damage in this region--as evidenced by the brownish debris in the water--because tsunami waves can diffract around land masses.

This NASA image, produced by Hal Pierce, is accompanied by the observation that “heavy rains have further complicated the matter and added to the misery in parts of eastern Sri Lanka. Between December 28, 2004, and January 5, 2005, up to 10 to 15 inches of rain may have fallen along the southeast coast of the island, and as much as 20 inches (red areas) fell just offshore.”