Hainan Island in China
Hainan Island in China Today’s Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory features Hainan Island in China with a massive storm cloud lingering above.
Professor Paul Markowski of Pennsylvania State University said the cloud is a cumulonimbus cloud, which is associated with thunderstorms and heavy precipitation.
The photo was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on May 11, 2020. China (Chinese: 中国; pinyin: Zhōngguó; lit. ‘Central State; Middle Kingdom’), officially the People’s Republic of China (Chinese: 中华人民共和国; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó; PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world’s most populous country, with a population of more than 1.4 billion. It borders 14 countries, the second most of any country in the world, after Russia. Covering an area of approximately 9.6 million square kilometers (3.7 million mi ), it is the world’s third or fourth-largest country. The country is officially divided into 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, and four direct-controlled municipalities of Beijing (the capital city), Tianjin, Shanghai (the largest city), and Chongqing, as well as two special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.
China was one of the world’s foremost economic powers for most of the two millennia from the 1st until the 19th century. For millennia, China’s political system was based on absolute hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, beginning with the Xia dynasty in 21st century BCE. Since then, China has expanded, fractured, and re-unified numerous times. In the 3rd century BCE, the Qin reunited core China and established the first Chinese empire. The succeeding Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) saw some of the most advanced technology at that time, including papermaking and the compass
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By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer
Image Credit: NASA
