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6 June 2011
Pictures From Space-Tornadoes and Their Aftermath
I’m just back from 9 days in Europe touring the World War One Battlefields of Flanders. I will share some of that soon, but in case you have not seen it yet-the before and after of the deadliest tornado on record since 1950. These were in the Hartford Courant Newspaper. Joplin Before: The tornado that hit near Springfield Mass. (while I was in Europe) has also produced some interesting …
20 May 2011
Our Very Thin Atmosphere
Click to see all the ones and zeroes as they were meant to be seen. From NASA today.
18 May 2011
City Lights and Economics
I posted an image a couple of weeks ago from the Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellites (DMSP) showing the lack of city lights over North Alabama after the massive tornado outbreak of April 27th. Many people are at least a little familiar with these images using a special sensor on the DMSP spacecraft and they are worth more than an illustration of why most humans today have no real concept …
17 May 2011
New NASA Image Shows Tuscaloosa Tornado Path
NASA’s Terra satellite has an instrument called ASTER, which stands for Advanced Space-borne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer. In non-geek that means it can sense infrared and visible light (this allows areas of vegetation to show up very well). Using multiple wavelengths, and even adding and subtracting one from another has allowed some incredible remote sensing images. The shot below has to be the top of the heap up to …
5 May 2011
Air Force DMSP Weather Satellite Shows The Darkness After The Storms
You’ve probably seen some of the city light images from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, but I have a new one to show you. The image below is a composite of the lights after the tornado swarm in Alabama, on Wednesday April 27th, with the lights seen just before. The lights in red are lights that were usually seen, but were missing after the tornadoes took out all of the …
4 May 2011
Geo-Eye Image shows Destruction from Tuscaloosa Tornado
GeoEye is a commercial satellite imagery company and they released a high-resolution image showing the damage path from the EF 4 tornado through Tuscaloosa, Alabama on Wednesday April 27. Click the image for a much higher resolution. You can also download an image file for Google Earth showing the track of all the strong tornadoes in Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee here. Once you load it into Google Earth you can …
13 April 2011
Huge Dust Storm Shuts Down Kuwait
A huge dust storm today in Iraq and Kuwait today. The visibility dropped so low that oil exports were stopped, and much of the country spent the day dealing with the thick dust. Click the image above to see a nice high resolution version of the image (from the MODIS sensor on the Aqua satellite). Dust storms are common in this part of the world, but this storm was …
25 March 2011
The Very Real Consequences of Defunding NOAA Satellites
I rarely pay much attention to federal budget issues, but this issue is on my turf. Having worked around TV-news folks for 31 years, I am rarely surprised by politics or politicians! You tend to get rather jaded because you end up seeing a lot of crazy things, day in and day out! That said, this is one I really could not believe. It seems the House of Representatives proposed …
4 March 2011
Glory Not To Be- It Crashes into the Pacific.
The failure of the Glory launch today is not just bad news. It’s a catastrophe for earth science; Especially American earth science. The failure of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, (OCO-on the same type of launch vehicle) and now this are going to set back critical research into the the Earth’s energy balance severely. I went over to REAL CLIMATE written by NASA Climate Scientist Gavin Schmidt and he has a …
26 February 2011
Yes, People are Breathing This-Smog over China
It’s called the ABC. The Asian Brown Cloud. The air pollution from cooking fires, coal fired power plants, and gasoline/diesel engines are the cause. This air pollution is measurable across the Pacific and into the West Coast of the U.S. Air pollution (from different areas of the world) has its own unique signature. A recent study indicated that about 30% of San Francisco’s particulate levels are from China.
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.