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Cruise control. 🚢 Severe drought is reducing the number of daily passages on the Panama Canal, causing the traffic backup of ships seen in this Landsat 8 image. The canal uses a series of locks fed by artificial lakes, which are now near-record low levels. The average wait time for August 2023 was nearly four times what it was a June. The Panama Canal is a 50-mile (80 km) artificial waterway across the Isthmus of Panama, providing a vital connection between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans for up to 14,000 ships a year. The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, got a rare cloud-free view of delayed ships on the Pacific side of the canal on Aug. 18, 2023. Image descriptions: Satellite image of ships waiting to cross the Panama Canal on Aug. 18, 2023. Blue water of the Pacific Ocean covers most of the image. The water is dotted with many ships, which appear as brightly colored rectangles in the otherwise blue ocean. In the top left corner is the green and brown land mass of Panama, partially obscured by puffy white clouds. The canal is a straight line of water running through the country, passing the red and tan buildings of the Port of Balboa. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory image by Wanmei Liang, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. #NASA #Earth #Panama #Canal #Ships #Traffic #Landsat