Desert bloom transforms Chile’s Atacama Region

Stretching across northern Chile between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes, the Atacama Region is home to one of the driest landscapes on Earth. In years of unusual amounts of rainfall, however, seeds and bulbs which lie dormant in the soil can germinate and cover parts of the desert in flowers. Known locally as the Desierto Florido (“flowering desert”), this rare natural phenomenon occurred again in 2026, following exceptional rainfall during the Southern Hemisphere winter.

This comparison uses false-colour images acquired by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites on 24 September 2025 and 21 September 2026. The 2026 image, on the right, shows abundant vegetation in bright red, in contrast to the largely barren landscape in the 2025 image, on the left.

Copernicus Sentinel-2 data support the monitoring of changes in vegetation and landscapes over time and help document rare environmental events such as this desert bloom.