Did anyone else realize that Google had created a Google Mapsesque lab based on the NASA MOLA (Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter) elevation map of the red planet? Or did I just miss this entirely? In any case, explore at Google Mars.
Just for fun, here’s the same map raster in a Bonne projection (standard parallel at 90N).
Projected with NASA’s G.Projector–a super-handy program to easily project global maps.
Colors show the number (not size or intensity) of fires per day per 1000 km2 for August 2010. More red pixels indicate less fires per day, and more yellow-white pixels indicate more. Check out the full animation for more data.
Source: NASA’s Earth Observatory; MODIS sensor, Terra satellite.
Phytoplankton bloom in the Barents Sea.
Image: NASA, Earth Observatory and Ocean Color Group. Acquired 31 August 2010 with the Aqua-MODIS sensor.
Know your O3—NASA reports that the ozone hole over Antartica is in the midst of its annual size increase. Remember that ‘hole’ is a metaphor here. There’s still ozone there, just much less than historical values. So far this year, the hole seems to be smaller than the average from 1979-2009, likely due to warmer stratosphere temperatures in the southern hemisphere.
September 16th was the International day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer. Better late than never, right?
Image: Ozone concentrations on September 21 2010 from NASA’s Ozone Hole Watch. The Ozone Hole Watch has all sorts of nifty animations and data, so explore!
Earlier this month, NASA’s MODIS sensor on their Aqua satellite captured this image of two enormous (enormous! see the scale bar?) icebergs hanging out near the coast of Antarctica.
Icebergs along Antarctica, NASA Earth Observatory.
Big icebergs can locally impede sea ice formation. The area on the leeward (not facing into the wind) side of these icebergs, is largely sea ice-free—this is due to the icebergs blocking winds, and thus sea ice doesn’t form there as readily.
Below is a time-series montage of an even bigger iceberg (B-15) breaking off the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica in 2000. It was twice the size of Delaware and was one the biggest recorded at the time of its calving….it has since broken into smaller ones.
B-15 calving in March 2000 in Antarctica. NASA Visible Earth.
Via NASA’s Earth Observatory and NASA’s Visible Earth.
2000-2009 mean global temperature, compared to the 1951-1980 mean. Image credit: NASA and Goddard Institute for Space Studies (click image to go there).
With all of the talk of ‘Snowmageddon’, keep the big climatological picture in mind. Conservatives here in the US have been mocking the concept of climate change for as long as I can remember, but recent snowstorms have seemed to really spur them on (e.g. here). Here’s some news released last month, from NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). 2000-2009 was the hottest decade on record. 2009 was the second hottest year on record. The map above shows the overall temperature rise in 2000-2009 versus average temperatures from 1951-1980, a commonly used reference. NASA uses three sources to assemble this sort of dataset: worldwide weather stations, satellite observations (for sea surface temperature), and measurements from Antarctic research stations.
Earth surface temperatures since 1880, relative to the average global temperature from 1951-1980. Image credit: NASA and Goddard Institute for Space Studies (click image to go there).
Yes, global temperatures fluctuate on an interannual (year to year) basis due to things like El Nino and other mechanisms, but if larger scales of variation are used (i.e. decadal,etc.), the average temperature on earth is clearly rising. The above graph shows the rise of global temperatures (except for a fleeting leveling out in the 1940s and 1970s) since 1880. Most climate scientists agree that the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are driving this warming. Global climate is a hugely complicated system with other factors, aerosol levels, changes in tropical sea surface temperatures, variability in the sun’s irradiance, and over longer timescales, the orbital geometry of our planet and other events, affecting temperatures as well. However, these other factors simply cannot account for this level of warming since 1880, according to NASA and GISS. So politicians, please inform yourselves and make policy decisions based on science, not ideology. I’m looking at you, US Senator and family who built an igloo and stuck signs on it to make fun of climate change (via the NY Times)…
—
Ref.
Voiland, A. (2010, January 21). 2009: Second Warmest Year on Record; End of Warmest Decade. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Accessed February 11, 2010.
uncharted atolls 