NASA Maps to Aid Super Typhoon Haiyan Disaster Relief

NASA scientists have used satellite images to create detailed maps of the devastation in the Philippines from Super Typhoon Haiyan in order to help disaster relief efforts by recovery crews.

Super Typhoon Haiyan — which struck the island nation on Nov. 8 — was one of the most powerful storms ever recorded, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. produced the damage maps in order to depict the hardest hit regions of the country, NASA officials wrote in a news release.

JPL's ARIA (Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis) team created the 24.9 by 31 mile (40 by 50 kilometers) map using data from the Italian Space Agency's COSMO-SkyMed satellite constellation. The image shows the area near Tacloban City, where the storm made landfall.