Cool Geo-Pic: Both Routes Around Arctic Open at Summer's End

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Click here to view full image (179 kb)

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" .... As of the first week of September 2008, Arctic sea ice extent had not fallen below the record low observed in 2007, but the season set a new kind of record. For the first time in probably half a century—and definitely since satellite observations began about three decades ago— sea ice retreated enough to create open (not ice-free) waters all the way around the northern ice pack. Open water is defined by the World Meteorological Organization for the purposes of navigation as areas where the ice covers less than one-tenth of the surface ...."

Click Here for Full Article

Credits:

Revkin, A. (2008, September 6). Arctic Ice Hints at Warming, Specialists Say. NYT.com. Accessed September 8, 2008.
U.S. National Ice Center. (2008, September 5). The Northern Sea Route (Northeast Passage) appears ‘open’ as of Sep 4th, 2008. Posted on NYT.com’s Dot Earth blog. Accessed September 8, 2008.
Further reading
Southern Route Through Northwest Passage Opens
Record Arctic Sea Ice Loss in 2007
Ice Shelves Retreat on Ellesmere Island
NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using data obtained courtesy of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). Caption by Rebecca Lindsey.

Cool Geo-Pic: Sunglint on the Amazon River, Brazil

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The setting sun glints off the Amazon River and numerous lakes in its floodplain in this astronaut photograph from August 19, 2008. Large areas of sunglint are common in oblique views (shot from an angle, rather than looking straight down from the spacecraft). About 150 kilometers of the sinuous Amazon is shown here; the area is about 1,000 kilometers inland from the Atlantic Ocean. Arrows show the generally eastward direction of flow of the Amazon. One of the great river’s tributaries, the Uatumã River, enters on the north side of the Amazon (top center). A small side channel, or distributary, of the Madeira River (beyond the left edge of the image) enters the view from the left. Tupinambarama Island occupies the swampy wetlands between the Amazon and Madeira rivers.

Full Article - CLick Here

Credits:

Astronaut photograph ISS017-E-13856 was acquired on August 19, 2008, with a Nikon D2Xs digital camera fitted with a 400 mm lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by the Expedition 17 crew. The image in this article has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast. Lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by M. Justin Wilkinson, NASA-JSC.

Cool Geo-Pic: Ice Shelves Retreat on Ellesmere Island

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Ice Shelves Retreat on Ellesmere Island

Large images
July 22, 2008 (Aqua MODIS; 3.6 MB JPEG)
August 29, 2008 (Terra MODIS; 4.0 MB JPEG)

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Prior to July 2008, only five ice shelves remained in the Canadian Arctic: Serson, Petersen, Milne, Ward Hunt, and Markham. With an estimated age of 4,500 years, these ice shelves were the remnants of a once-massive “glacial fringe” that explorer Robert Peary described in his trek along the Ellesmere Island coast in 1907. In July 2008, these shelves began disintegrating rapidly. By late August, Ellesmere ice shelves had lost a total of 214 square kilometers (83 square miles). A research team led by Derek Mueller at Trent University, and Luke Copland at the University of Ottawa, documented the ice shelves’ retreats through satellite images and photos.

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Credits:

For more information, see the Earth Observatory feature Rapid Retreat: Ice Shelf Loss along Canada’s Ellesmere Coast.
NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using data provided courtesy of the MODIS Rapid Response team. Caption by Michon Scott.

Cool Geo-Pic: Stormy Atlantic - Sept 2008

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Another cool Geo-Pic from NASA:


Click here to view full image (1345 kb)



Quite "Cut & Paste" Highllght:
" .... The Atlantic hurricane season typically peaks in early to mid-September after the ocean’s surface has had time to heat up in the summer sun. As if on cue, a string of storms formed over the Atlantic as September approached during the 2008 hurricane season.


When the GOES satellite captured this view of the atmosphere at 1:45 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on September 3, four storms were lined up across the Atlantic, and one had developed in the Eastern Pacific. GOES’ view of the clouds are overlaid on the NASA Blue Marble. ...."


Full Article - Click Here

Cool Geo-Pic: Sulfur Dioxide from Okmok Volcano

Sulfur Dioxide from Okmok Volcano
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On July 12, 2008, Okmok Volcano, in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands erupted, releasing a plume of ash and steam. Besides emissions visible to human eyes, Okmok also released sulfur dioxide, a gas our eyes cannot see, but which can affect both human health and climate.

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite measured the sulfur dioxide from Okmok Volcano from July 12-20, 2008. This image shows the estimated sulfur dioxide at altitudes around 16 kilometers (10 miles) released by the volcano over that time span, with red indicating the highest levels, and pale pink indicating the lowest. The sulfur dioxide was most intense southeast of the volcano, but lower levels spread both to the south and east, forming a large L shape, and spreading over parts of the continental United States and Canada...."

Full Article:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=18098

Credits:

Image courtesy Fred Prata, NILU. Caption by Michon Scott and Rebecca Lindsey.

Cool Geo-Pic: Earth and the Moon

Cool Geo-Pic: Earth and the Moon

Click here to view animation (525 kb)

Animations
True-color high quality (9.5 MB QuickTime)
True-color web quality (530 kB QuickTime)
Infrared high quality (10.3 MB QuickTime)
Infrared web quality (570 kB QuickTime)

Another from NASA's Earth Observatory.

"Cut & Paste" Highlights:

" ... Among the leading criteria for habitable planets is the presence of liquid water. How would you know from a distance of 10 million or more miles that Earth had oceans? “A ‘sun glint’ can be seen in the movie, caused by light reflected from Earth’s oceans, and similar glints [if they were observed] from extra-solar planets could indicate alien oceans, ..."

Full Article:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=18096

References:

NASA. (2008, July 17). NASA’s Deep Impact Films Earth as an Alien World. Accessed July 21, 2008.
NASA images and animation courtesy EPOXI science team. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey, adapted from the NASA press release.

Cool Geo-Pic: Cordillera Huayhuash, Peruvian Andes

Another Cool Geo-Pic from NASA's Earth Observatory & the ISS crew.


Cordillera Huayhuash, Peruvian Andes: Click here to view full image (401 kb)


"Cut & Paste" highlights:
" ... Widely considered the most spectacular peak in South America, Yerupajá is so steep that it has seldom been climbed. The best climbing approach is from the southwest, the face seen in this view. Yerupajá is locally known as El Carnicero (“The Butcher”) because of its blade-like ridges, typical of mountains that have been heavily eroded by glacial ice. Other features created by the erosive effect of flowing ice are small glacial lakes, which often vary in color due to different amounts of fine mud being fed into them by meltwater from under the glaciers. During the ice ages, the glaciers advanced many kilometers outward from the cordillera, occupying all the surrounding valley floors (all of which lie above 3,000 meters), producing U-shape valleys.... "

Full Article:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=18093

Save My Airport!

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The Business Travel Coalition has created a website, Save My Airport!, that’s intended to spotlight the risk to smaller markets and presumably to stir up civic opposition to the cuts. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________

At this website, BTC has put together a list of 50 larger airports at risk of having service sharply curtailed and 100 smaller airports that could even see service eliminated completely.

Top 50 Large City Airports at Risk

Top 100 Regional Airports at Risk

Cool Geo-Pic: Formation and Decay of Hurricane Bertha

Another Cool Geo-Pic from NASA's Earth Observatory.

now living in Florida nearly sixteen years, you appreciate the power of the massive storms with your livelihood in mind.

Large images
July 4, 2008 (238 kB JPEG)
July 7, 2008 (212 kB JPEG)
July 9, 2008 (181 kB JPEG)
July 13, 2008 (136 kB JPEG)

Cut & Paste" Highlights:

"... This series of images chronicles the development and decay of the first hurricane of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season, Hurricane Bertha. The images were taken by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite, which uses microwave and radar sensors to see both the swirling clouds and bands of rain that define the structure of the storm...."

Click Here to Read Full Article

References:
National Hurricane Center. Hurricane Bertha advisory archive. Accessed July 15, 2008.
Roberts, E. and McFadden, D. (2008, July 15). Tropical Storm Bertha rakes Bermuda. Associated Press. Accessed July 15, 2008.
Images produced by Hal Pierce and caption by Steve Lang and Holli Riebeek.

Cool Geo-Pic: Dakar, Senegal

Another Cool Geo-Pic from NASA's Earth Observatory.

There is something striking about the coast edges that makes this image intriguing.

Click here to view full image (1352 kb)

"Cut & Paste Description" Highlights:
" ....In 2008, one out of every four people living in Senegal lived in the coastal capital of Dakar. Over previous decades, the city spread over the Cap Vert Peninsula as a result of both migration and growing families. In the 1940s, the city occupied just the southern tip of the peninsula. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, cityscape had sprawled both northward and eastward..... "

Click Here for Full Article

References:
United Nations Environment Programme. (2008). Africa: Atlas of Our Changing Environment. Division of Early Warning and Assessment, United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi, Kenya.
Hopkins, B. (2008). Birding in the Dakar area. Seawatching in Senegal.
NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data provided by the United States Geological Survey. Caption by Michon Scott.