The summer of 2003 broke temperature records in Switzerland and across central Europe. Many climate modelers and meteorologists suggest that this kind of event is a related to anthropogenic climate change, and that summer of 2003 might be a window into summer conditions of the future. In order to begin to understand how elevated summer temperatures might interact with other environmental variables, this study will compare MODIS NDVI and thermal reflectance band data in summer of 2003 to data from three previous years. The goal is to try and understand how the very hot temperatures relate to changes in vegetation dynamics and thermal reflectance/regulation across the region. We will use Landsat images to look at dynamics at a finer resolution and by land cover type.