Fall Colors Arriving A few days after autumn showed up on the calendar in the Northern Hemisphere, it showed up on the landscape of North America. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this view of fall colors around the Great Lakes on Sept. 26, 2014. The changing of leaf color in temperate forests involves several causes and reactions, but the dominant factors are sunlight and heat. Since temperatures tend to drop sooner and sunlight fades faster at higher latitudes, the progression of fall color changes tends to move from north to south across North America from mid-September through mid-November. Image Credit: Jeff Schmaltz at NASA GSFC. Caption by Mike Carlowicz. #fall #autumn #leaves #fallleaves #autumnleaves #seasons #seasonalchange #greatlakes #nasa #earth #earthpics #modis