Posts Tagged ‘MRRT’

The absolutely latest image of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill as viewed by NASA’s Terra satellite with the MODIS imaging instrument.

Acquired: 04/29/2010 at 16 :48 UTC

A massive oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico continued spreading on April 29, 2010, moving perilously close to shore, according to news reports. As the oil slick spread, the U.S. Coast Guard attempted controlled burns on some of the oil to prevent its spread, but had to halt the process due to high winds. Meanwhile, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration constructed a dome-and-pipe system to contain the spread of oil at the sea floor.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured a natural-color image of the oil slick just off the Louisiana coast. The oil slick appears as dull gray interlocking comma shapes, one opaque and the other nearly transparent. The northwestern tip of the oil slick almost touches the Mississippi Delta. Sunglint—the mirror-like reflection of the Sun off the water—enchances the oil slick’s visibility.

The oil slick resulted from an explosion that occurred on April 20, 2010, on the Deepwater Horizon rig. Two days after the explosion, the rig sank to the ocean floor, and a pipe connected to the well on the sea floor broke. Oil began leaking from the pipe, The New York Times reported. The following week, the U.S. Coast Guard discovered a new leak, and also found that five times as much oil was pouring from the well as initially assumed, according to Reuters.

NASA’s Aqua satellite, MODIS instrument, caught this image of the erupting Eyjafjallajokull Volcano yesterday. Enjoy.

The MODIS instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured an Ash plume from Eyjafjallajokull Volcano over the North Atlantic at 13:20 UTC (9:20 a.m. EDT) on April 17, 2010.

The Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland erupted Wednesday, April 14, for the second time this month. The volcano is still spewing ash into the air and the ash clouds are impacting air travel in Northern Europe.

Credit: NASA/MODIS Rapid Response Team

The Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland erupted today, Wednesday, April 15 for the second time this month. The volcano is still spewing ash into the air and the ash clouds are impacting air travel in Northern Europe. You can see an animation of the ash as it moves over Europe here.

Three different images, from three different spacecraft. NASA’s Terra satellite, Earth Observing-1 satellite, and ESA’s Envisat satellite. Further details on each below each image, and of course you should click for a higher resolution image. This is especially true for the image taken from Envisat, or the last and smallest of the three as viewed in this post.

Lava continued to pour out of two fissures near Eyjafjallajökull as the eruption near the Fimmvörduháls Pass entered its third week. This satellite image shows the eruption on April 4, 2010. The original fissure—originally about 1,000 meters (3,000 feet) long and composed of several distinct vents—has coalesced into a single vent.

The new fissure is hidden under a volcanic plume, likely composed primarily of steam. Black lava flows reach several kilometers north from the vents, eventually spilling into Hvannárgil and Hrunagil Canyons. This image was acquired by the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) aboard NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite.

NASA’s Terra satellite flew over the volcano at 11:35 UTC (7:35 a.m. EDT) on April 15, 2010 and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS instrument aboard Terra captured a visible image of the ash plume from Eyjafjallajokull Volcano.

The MODIS Rapid Response System was developed to provide daily satellite images of the Earth’s landmasses in near real time. True-color, photo-like imagery and false-color imagery are available within a few hours of being collected, making the system a valuable resource. The MODIS Rapid Response Team that generates the images is located at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Credits: ESA

This image, acquired on 15 April 2010 by Envisat’s Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS), shows the vast cloud of volcanic ash sweeping across the UK from the eruption in Iceland, more than 1000 km away. The ash, which can be seen as the large grey streak in the image, is drifting from west to east at a height of about 11 km above the surface Earth.

Update: Video footage of the eruption.

Another Update: Two more links, this time to live web cameras from Iceland. Enjoy! Two for different viewpoints. Link 1 & Link 2

Powerful storm near Guam.

The MODIS instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Super Typhoon Nida early on Nov. 25 that shows a perfectly symmetrical storm and a clear eye, both hallmarks of a powerful typhoon.

At 10 a.m. ET on November 25, Super Typhoon Nida had maximum sustained winds near 172 mph (150 knots) with gusts as high as 207 mph! A category five typhoon on the Saffir-Simpson scale has sustained winds greater than 155 mph. Typhoon-force winds extend as far as 45 miles from Nida’s center, while tropical storm-force winds extend out as far as 105 miles from Nida’s center.

Nida was about 155 miles west-southwest of Guam, near 12.6 North latitude and 142.2 East longitude. It was moving to the northwest near 15 mph, and its powerful winds were kicking up dangerously high waves up to 44 feet high!

Credit: NASA MODIS Rapid Response Team

New MODIS image, this time of a dust storm in Washington state in the United States.

Visibility dropped to zero in parts of eastern Washington on October 4, 2009, as a large dust storm blew through. After numerous multi-vehicle accidents, sections of Interstate 90 near the town of Moses Lake had to be closed for several hours. This image of the storm was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite shortly after noon (Pacific Daylight Time).

A thick, rippling plume of dust runs northeast to southwest through the center of the image. On either side of the swath of dust, growing and fallow fields make a green and tan patchwork across the landscape. Dust stretches as far south as the cities of Pasco and Kennewick, which sit on opposite banks of the Columbia River.

Fires burning in Yellowstone as seen by NASA’s Aqua satellite.

On September 27, 2009, a large wildfire burned northwest of Yellowstone Lake while smaller fires burned to the south. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this true-color image the same day. Red outlines indicate hotspots associated with wildfires. Thick smoke from the Arnica fire largely obscures the satellite’s view of Yellowstone Lake. The smaller fires in the south produce thinner plumes of smoke.

According to a report from the Incident Information System on September 29, 2009, the Arnica fire had burned 9,300 acres (38 square kilometers). Ignited by lightning on September 13, the fire grew dramatically starting on September 24, thanks to warm temperatures and high winds. As of September 29, the fire retained a high growth potential.

A tan cloud of Saharan dust hangs over the North Atlantic Ocean in this photo-like satellite image from September 21, 2009. The image shows signs that the dust extends both west and north away from the coast and up into the atmosphere. The dust takes the shape of the wind, forming waves near the surface immediately offshore. This surface-level dust is veiled in a thin cloud of brown where dust has infiltrated higher into the atmosphere. This vertical distribution of dust creates the “X” in the plume near the center of the image: the top layer of dust is moving a different direction than the lower layer of dust.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image on the afternoon of September 21, 2009. The image is available in a variety of resolutions from the MODIS Rapid Response System.

Hopefully you folks aren’t sick of all the Australian dust pictures, so here are two more at least. This time an image from NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellite.

On the morning of September 24, 2009, the dense dust that had covered eastern Australia the previous day blew south over the Tasman Sea towards New Zealand. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this photo-like image of the storm on September 24, at 11:10 a.m., New Zealand time (23:10 UTC on September 23). The dust plume is still densely concentrated in this image, attesting to the strength of the winds. The plume is clearly entrained in the storm system that brought the winds to Australia in the first place. The plume underlies the storm clouds, sharing their fish-hook shape.

The image covers approximately 2,300 kilometers (1,429 miles) from north to south, about the same distance from New York City to the center of Kansas in the middle of the United States. The lower half of New Caledonia Island is visible along the top edge of the image. Hidden by clouds, the northern shore of New Zealand’s South Island is outlined in the lower right corner of the image. A few hours after Terra MODIS captured this image, the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite observed the northern half of the plume extending along the east coast of Australia to the northern tip of Queensland’s Cape York Peninsula on September 24. The straight-line distance between the far northern edge of the plume on September 24 and the southern edge is about 3,450 kilometers (2,700 miles), roughly equivalent to the distance between New York City and Los Angeles.

NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Holli Riebeek.

By the early afternoon of September 24, 2009, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this image, the thick dust that had covered the eastern shore of Australia the previous day stretched in a long plume from northern Queensland to New Zealand. This image shows the northern portion of the plume off the coast of Queenland. The tan dust is densely concentrated in a compact plume that mirrors the coastline. The gem-like blue-green Great Barrier Reef is visible beneath the plume near the top of the image where the tan dust mingles with gray-brown smoke from wildfires.

Earlier in the day, Terra MODIS imaged the southern portion of the dust plume near New Zealand. The straight-line distance between the far northern edge of the plume, shown in this image, and the southern edge captured in the Terra MODIS image is about 3,450 kilometers (2,700 miles), roughly equivalent to the distance between New York City and Los Angeles.

NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Holli Riebeek.

Many of you have already seen the image from the previous day, when dust hung over the east coast of Australia. With a new day, the MODIS Rapid Response Team takes another look. This time with the Aqua satelltie.

Below you can see the dust which has lifted from the coast of Australia and blown out to sea.

Picture of the dust storm covering the Australia east coast taken by NASA’s Terra satellite. Props to the MODIS rapid response team.

No larger image. Credit: BBC

A wall of dust stretched from northern Queensland to the southern tip of eastern Australia on the morning of September 23, 2009, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image. The dust is thick enough that the land beneath it is not visible. The storm, the worst in 70 years, led to canceled or delayed flights, traffic problems, and health issues, reported the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) News. The concentration of particles in the air reached 15,000 micrograms per cubic meter in New South Wales during the storm, said ABC News. A normal day sees a particle concentration 10-20 micrograms per cubic meter.

Strong winds blew the dust from the interior to more populated regions along the coast. In this image, the dust rises in plumes from point sources and concentrates in a wall along the front of the storm. The large image shows that some of the point sources are agricultural fields, recognizable by their rectangular shape. Australia has suffered from a multiple-year drought, and much of the dust is coming from fields that have not been planted because of the drought, said ABC News.

NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center. Caption by Holli Riebeek.

For an excellent ground view, two links to photos. The Big Picture is especially good.
TBP

Red Sydney