The nexus of information and computing technologies, new ways of observing both the biosphere and the anthroposphere, and the broadening of the community of interest around global environmental issues, has led to major developments in knowledge and policy around the world. Each new science has its one image – and in this area it is the NASA Apollo mission image of the Earth rising above the Moon. All at once the Earth was seen as a bounded, discrete and lonely blue ball in the black void of space. All of a sudden the finite nature of our home was made clear. Developments in communications and computing technologies, together with data from the space programmes of the major Western and other nations, have led to a revolution in the way we can image, measure and model global phenomena. If space programmes were originally spurred on by the arms race of the Cold War then what we are witnessing is a real ‘peace dividend’ from those investments in new technologies. Beginning with the early LANDSAT missions and developing through the NASA Earth Observing System and remote sensing programmes from Japan, Europe, India and other countries we have, since the 1970s, witnessed the rapid development of many sophisticated earth observing systems to measure and monitor atmospheric, oceanic and terrestrial patterns and processes.