JPSS (SNPP and NOAA-20)

Pumice Rafts: The Floating Rocks of the Sea

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Curtis Seaman

Do rocks float? The answer to that is “Depends on which rocks you’re talking about.”

We just looked at what happens in the atmosphere when a volcano like Copahue erupts. We also looked at the impact the 1912 eruption of Novarupta still has today. And, before VIIRS was launched into space, there was Eyjafjallajökull – the Icelandic volcano that nobody could pronounce. (Think “Eye-a-Fiat-la-yo-could” [click here to hear audio of some guy saying it properly].) These are examples of what geologists would refer to as an “explosive eruption”. Not all volcanoes blow ash into the atmosphere. Think of Kilauea in Hawaii – this is an example of an “effusive eruption” where lava oozes or bubbles up out of the ground in a rather non-violent manner. These are the most common volcanic eruptions on land that everyone should already be familiar with.

But, what happens when the volcano is underwater? You get what a group of New Zealand geologists are calling “Tangaroan” (named after the Maori god of the sea, Tangaroa). This article explains it in more detail, but the short version is this: at the bottom of the ocean, there is immense pressure from the weight of the water above the volcano that prevents an eruption from being truly “explosive”, yet the eruptions are often more violent than an effusive eruption. The magma, filled with gas, erupts into the ocean where the outer edges are instantly cooled and solidified. (The water is cold at the bottom of the ocean.) This traps all the gas inside and you get a rock that’s filled with millions of tiny air bubbles, which is called pumice. This new rock can be so light, it floats to the surface.

What does this have to do with VIIRS or a blog about imagery from weather satellites? Large underwater volcanic eruptions can create large quantities of pumice that float to the surface of the ocean and create what are called pumice rafts. VIIRS has seen these pumice rafts.

Here is a “natural color” or “pseudo-true color” RGB composite of VIIRS channels I-01 (0.64 µm, blue), I-02 (0.865 µm, green) and I-03 (1.61 µm, red), taken at 01:40 UTC 27 August 2012. Notice anything unusual in the water?

False color RGB composite of VIIRS channels I-01, I-02 and I-03, taken 01:40 UTC 27 August 2012

As always, click on the image, then on the “2798×2840” link below the banner to see the full resolution image. All those pale blue-gray swirls in the ocean surrounding Raoul Island and Macauley Island are the pumice rafts. They almost look like someone sprayed “Silly String” in the ocean.

To get a sense of the scale of these rafts, the latitude lines plotted on the image are ~111 km apart. Some of these rafts are 1-2 km wide in places. In this image you can see pumice rafts stretching from about 27.5 °S to 31.5 °S latitude and from about 175 °W to 178 °E longitude. That is a lot of floating rocks!

Here is a zoomed version of the previous image:

False color RGB composite of VIIRS channels I-01, I-02 and I-03, taken 01:40 UTC 27 August 2012

The main concentration of floating pumice is in the box the covers the area from 29 °S to 30 °S latitude and from about 176 °W to 178 °E longitude, although there is plenty of pumice south of that box – it’s just a little harder to see.

As an aside, Raoul and Macauley islands are part of the Kermadec Islands of New Zealand. If you’re interested, the New Zealand government is always looking for volunteers to spend six months on Raoul Island pulling weeds and keeping invasive species off the island. (There, that saves me from doing a Remote Island post to cover this.)

These pumice rafts have been traced back to the eruption of the Havre Seamount (an underwater volcano) on 18 July 2012. This new eruption is part of the “Ring of Fire” in the southwestern part of the Pacific Ocean, roughly 1,000 kilometers northeast of New Zealand. If you believe the Wikipedia article linked to first in this paragraph, the eruption was unknown until an aircraft passenger took pictures of the pumice raft from her plane on 31 July 2012. I have been able to track this pumice back to 26 July 2012. Before that, it is too cloudy, making it difficult to see anything. (Apparently, MODIS saw it on 19 July 2012.)

False color RGB composite of VIIRS channels I-01, I-02 and I-03, taken 01:39 UTC 26 July 2012

The red arrow points to the pumice raft. There’s a nice looking cyclone southwest of the pumice, but I’m not sure if it was given a name. If you zoom in, you can see Cheeseman Island and Curtis Island off to the east of the raft. These islands were obscured by clouds on the 27 August 2012 overpass. Cheeseman Island is only 7.6 ha (19 acres) and Curtis Island is 40 ha (99 acres), yet VIIRS has the resolution to see them!

In an effort to highlight these pumice rafts, a PCI analysis was performed on the five VIIRS high-resolution imagery (I-band) channels. PCI analysis uses principal components to identify the major modes of variability within the data. Analysis of the 5 VIIRS I-bands resulted in 5 PCIs or component images. Of those components, PCI-2, 3, and 5 appeared to show the pumice rafts. A particular RGB combination of those three components (red = PCI-5, green = PCI-2 and blue = PCI-3) resulted in the pumice appearing red on a green-blue ocean. Clouds are white, then cyan and then red for colder cloud-top temperatures. (Certain pepper-like black pixels are out of range in the PCI analysis.) The three principal components that highlight the pumice rafts are shown in the figure below, along with the resulting RGB composite. Unfortunately, these images were made using McIDAS-X, which has a habit of plotting VIIRS data upside-down. Therefore, north in each image is at the bottom.

PCI Analysis of the 5 VIIRS I-band channels from 01:40 UTC 27 August 2012. Panels A, B, and C are the second, third and fifth principal component images from this analysis (PCI-2, PCI-3 and PCI-5). Panel D is an RGB composite of these three images with PCI-5 as red, PCI-2 as green and PCI-3 as blue. Images courtesy Don Hillger.

This in an image you’ll want to zoom in on to see the details as you consider the information in the previous paragraph. There are two main results of this PCI analysis: it can be used to highlight pumice rafts (although they have the same color as cold cloud tops) and the temperature information from channel I-5 (11.5 µm), which shows up in PCI-5, indicates that the pumice has a tendency to collect along gradients in sea surface temperature.

Being able to track the pumice rafts is important for geology, biology and oceanography. They can act as a tracer for following ocean currents. Some of them crack and fill with water, causing them to sink to the bottom, depositing the newly formed rock in other parts of the sea floor. The nature of the pumice gives clues about what happens in underwater volcanoes, a process that is not well known at this point. And, as these floating pieces of pumice are carried around, organisms like algae, coral, and barnacles will attach to them and grow, eventually settling in far away places. Studying these rafts may shed new light on how life can spread across the oceans.

So, yes – rocks can float. And they can be seen by a weather satellite with 375 m resolution.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged false color, I-1, I-2, I-3, New Zealand, pumice rafts, Raoul Island, resolution, RGB composite, volcano | Comments Off

Copahue, the Stinky Volcano

Posted on January 4, 2013 by Curtis Seaman

On the border between Chile and Argentina sits the volcano Copahue. (If you say it out loud, it is pronounced “CO-pa-hway”.) In the local Mapuche language, copahue means “sulfur water”. This name was given to the volcano as the most active crater contains a highly acidic lake full of sulfur. An eruption in 1992 filled the area with “a strong sulfur smell.” Later eruptions have involved “pyroclastic sulfur” (molten hot sulfur ash) and highly acidic mudflows. That doesn’t sound very pleasant.

Right before Christmas, Copahue was at it again. It erupted on 22 December 2012, sending a cloud of sulfur ash into the atmosphere, and MODIS got there first. VIIRS got there 4 hours later and took this image:

VIIRS "true color" RGB composite of channels M-03, M-04 and M-05, taken 18:38 UTC 22 December 2012

This is a “true color” image just like the MODIS one in the link. Make sure you click on the image, then on the “3200×2304” link below the banner to see it in full resolution. Then see if you can spot the volcanic ash cloud from Copahue. I’ll give you a hint: it’s the only cloud that appears brownish-gray.

If you still can’t see it, here’s a zoomed-in image with a yellow arrow to help you out:

VIIRS "true color" RGB composite of the Copahue volcano, taken 18:38 UTC 22 December 2012

Now compare the ash cloud in the VIIRS image with the ash cloud in the MODIS image from 4 hours earlier. (This is easier to do if you can locate in the VIIRS image the lakes marked as “Embalse los Barreales” in the MODIS image.) There’s a lot less ash in the VIIRS image, right?

Not so fast. As the ash dispersed, the plume thinned out, making it harder to see against the brown background surface. But, that doesn’t mean that it’s not there. Here’s the “split window difference” image from VIIRS at the same time:

VIIRS "split window difference" image (M-15 - M-16) taken 18:38 UTC 22 December 2012

That whole black plume is volcanic ash detected by the split window difference. The yellow arrow points to Copahue and the ash plume that is visible in the true color image. The red arrow points to the ash plume that is not visible in the true color image, yet is detected by this simple channel difference (M-15 minus M-16). A victory for the split window technique!

It was also a victory for the EUMETSAT Dust RGB, which didn’t work for the 100-year-old ash cloud over Alaska. Here’s what that RGB composite looks like when applied to VIIRS:

EUMETSAT's Dust RGB composite applied to VIIRS from 18:38 UTC 22 December 2012

It is interesting that the ash plume right over Copahue is tough to detect in this RGB composite because it is red, just like a lot of the other clouds. As the plume thins out away from the volcano, its color changes to a variety of pastels of pink and blue, and even appears to extend out over the Atlantic Ocean. Where clouds and ash coexist near the coast of Argentina, pixels show up orange and yellow and green (click to the high-resolution image to see that).

Why does the plume appear to extend into the Atlantic Ocean in the EUMETSAT Dust RGB, and not in the split window difference? It is due to the fact that the Dust RGB uses channel M-14 (8.55 µm), which is sensitive to absorption by sulfur dioxide (SO₂) gas. The split window difference is better at detecting sulfuric ash particles, which may have mostly settled out of the atmosphere before reaching the Atlantic coast. There are likely still some ash particles in the plume, though – just not enough to show up easily in the split window difference. Detection of SO₂ gas plumes has been used to infer the presence of volcanic ash.

Being able to see the location of the volcanic ash very important to pilots. Aircraft engines don’t work that well when they are sucking in particles of liquified sulfur and other abrasive and corrosive materials spit out by stinky volcanoes like Copahue.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Argentina, ash detection, Chile, M-14, M-15, M-16, M-3, M-4, M-5, MODIS, RGB composite, split window difference, true color, VIIRS, volcano | Comments Off

End of Autumn in the Alps

Posted on December 17, 2012 by Curtis Seaman

Much of the United States has had a below-average amount of snow this fall (and below-average precipitation for the whole year). Look at how little snow cover there was in the month of November. Parts of Europe, however, have seen snow. It’s nice to know that it’s falling somewhere. But, can you tell where?

Here is a visible image (0.6 µm) from Meteosat-9, taken 12 December 2012 (at 12:00 UTC):

Meteosat-9 visible image of central Europe, taken 12:00 UTC 12 December 2012. Image courtesy EUMETSAT.

And here’s the infrared image (10.8 µm) from the same time:

Meteosat-9 IR-window image of central Europe, taken 12:00 UTC 12 December 2012. Image courtesy EUMETSAT.

These are images provided by EUMETSAT. Can you tell where the snow is? Or what is snow and what is cloud?

Here’s a much higher resolution image from VIIRS (zoomed in the Alps), taken only 3 minutes later:

VIIRS visible image of central Europe, taken 12:03 UTC 12 December 2012

VIIRS visible image (channel I-01) of central Europe, taken 12:03 UTC 12 December 2012

Now is it easy to differentiate clouds from snow? Just changing the resolution doesn’t help that much.

This has long been a problem for satellites operating in visible to infrared wavelengths. Visible-wavelength channels detect clouds based on the fact that they are highly reflective (just like snow). Infrared (IR) channels are sensitive to the temperature of the objects they’re looking at, and detect clouds because they are usually cold (just like snow). So, it can be difficult to distinguish between the two. If you had a time lapse loop of images, you’d most likely see the clouds move, while the snow stays put (or disappears because it is melting). But, what if you only had one image? What if the clouds were anchored to the terrain and didn’t move? How would you detect snow in these cases?

EUMETSAT has developed several RGB composites to help identify snow. The Daytime Microphysics RGB (link goes to PowerPoint file) looks like this:

Meteosat-9 "Daytime Microphysics" RGB composite of central Europe, taken 12:00 UTC 12 December 2012. Image courtesy EUMETSAT.

Snow is hot pink (magenta), which shows up pretty well. Clouds are a multitude of colors based on type, particle size, optical thickness, and phase. That whole PowerPoint file linked above is designed to help you understand all the different colors.

The Daytime Microphysics RGB uses a reflectivity calculation for the 3.9 µm channel (the green channel of the RGB). Without bothering to do that calculation, I’ve replaced the reflectivity at 3.9 µm with the reflectivity at 2.25 µm (M-11) when applying this RGB product to VIIRS, and produced a similar result:

VIIRS "Daytime Microphysics" RGB composite of the Alps, taken 12:03 UTC 12 December 2012

Except for the wavelength difference of the green channel (and minor differences between the VIIRS channels and Meteosat channels), everything else is kept the same as the official product definition. Once again, the snow is pink, in sharp contrast to the clouds and the snow-free surfaces. We won’t bother to show the Nighttime Microphysics/Fog RGB (link goes to PowerPoint file) since this is a daytime scene.

EUMETSAT has also developed a Snow RGB (link goes to PowerPoint file):

Meteosat-9 "Snow" RGB composite of central Europe, taken 12:00 UTC 12 December 2012. Image courtesy EUMETSAT.

This also uses the reflectivity calculated for the 3.9 µm channel. Plus, it uses a gamma correction for the blue and green channels. Is it just me, or does snow show up better in the Daytime Microphysics RGB?

If you switch out the 3.9 µm for the 2.25 µm channel again and skip the gamma correction when creating this RGB composite for VIIRS, the snow stands out a lot more:

VIIRS "Snow" RGB (with modifications as explained in the text), taken 12:03 UTC 12 December 2012

Now you have snow ranging from pink to red with gray land areas, black water and pale blue to light pink clouds. This combination of channels makes snow identification easier than the official “Snow RGB”, I think.

All of this is well and good but, for my money, nothing beats what EUMETSAT calls the “natural color” RGB. I have referred to it as the “pseudo-true color“. Here’s the low-resolution EUMETSAT image:

Meteosat-9 "Natural Color" RGB of central Europe, taken 12:00 UTC 12 December 2012. Image courtesy EUMETSAT.

And the higher resolution VIIRS image:

VIIRS "Natural Color" RGB of central Europe, taken 12:03 UTC 12 December 2012

VIIRS "Natural Color" RGB composite of channels M-5, M-7 and M-10, taken 12:03 UTC 12 December 2012

The VIIRS image above uses the moderate resolution channels M-5, M-7 and M-10, although this RGB composite can be made with the high-resolution imagery channels I-01, I-02 and I-03, which basically have the same wavelengths and twice the horizontal resolution. Below is the highest resolution offered by VIIRS (cropped down slightly to reduce memory usage when plotting the data):

VIIRS "Natural Color" RGB composite of channels I-01, I-02 and I-03, taken 12:03 UTC 12 December 2012

Make sure to click on the image and then on the “2594×1955” link below the banner to see the image in full resolution.

This RGB composite is easier on the eyes and easier to understand. Snow has high reflectivity in M-5 (I-01) and M-7 (I-02) but low reflectivity in M-10 (I-03) so, when combined in the RGB image, it shows up as cyan. Liquid clouds have high reflectivity in all three channels so it shows up as white (or dirty, off-white). The only source of contention is that ice clouds, if they’re thick enough, will also show up as cyan.

Except for the cyan snow and ice, the “natural color” RGB is otherwise similar to a “true color” image. Vegetation shows up green, unlike the other RGB composites where it has been gray or purple or a very yellowish green. That makes it more intuitive for the average viewer. You don’t need to read an entire guide book to understand all the colors that you’re seeing.

Compare all of these RGB composites against the single channel images at the top of the page. They all make it easier to distinguish clouds from snow, although some work better than others. Now compare the VIIRS images with the Meteosat images. Which ones look better?

(To be fair, it’s not all Meteosat’s fault. The images provided by EUMETSAT are low-resolution JPG files [which is a lossy-compression format]. The VIIRS images shown here are loss-less PNG files, which are much larger files to have to store and they require more bandwidth to display.)

As a bonus (consider it your Christmas bonus), here are a few more high-resolution “natural color” images of snow and low clouds over the Alps. These are kept at a 4:3 width-to-height ratio and a 16:9 ratio, so they make ideal desktop wallpapers.

VIIRS "natural color" composite of channels I-01, I-02 and I-03, taken 12:29 UTC 14 November 2012. This is an ideal desktop wallpaper for 4:3 ratio monitors.

That was the 4:3 ratio image. Here’s the 16:9 ratio image:

VIIRS "natural color" composite of channels I-01, I-02 and I-03, taken 12:29 UTC 14 November 2012. This is an ideal desktop wallpaper for 16:9 ratio monitors.

Enjoy the snow (or be glad you don’t have to drive in it)!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Alps, Europe, false color, I-1, I-2, I-3, ice and snow, M-10, M-11, M-15, M-5, M-7, Meteosat, resolution, RGB composite, VIIRS | Comments Off

The Case of the 100-year-old Ash Cloud

Posted on November 29, 2012 by Curtis Seaman

Lost in all the commotion caused by Hurricane Sandy, a curious event occurred on the other side of the country on 30 October 2012. A cloud of ash obscured the skies of Kodiak Island, Alaska, diverting flights in the region and forcing the people of Kodiak to stay inside or wear masks. Alaska has quite a few volcanoes, so this may not be a big thing to them except, this was no ordinary volcanic eruption: it was the leftovers of a volcanic eruption from 100 years ago!

The volcano that came to be known as Novarupta erupted on 6 June 1912. It was one of the largest volcanic eruptions of recorded history. It was 10 times more powerful than Mt. St. Helens with 100 times more ash. The explosion was heard more than 1100 km (700 miles) away in Juneau. The force of the eruption caused nearby Mt. Katmai to collapse on itself (10 km away). It formed the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes and, most importantly for us, covered the surrounding land with 150 m (500 ft) of ash.

This pile of ash – still there today – can be lifted by a stiff breeze (or, more appropriately, “strong breeze” or higher on the Beaufort wind scale), and blown pretty high off the ground (4000 ft according to the news report). This isn’t the first time this has happened. MODIS observed the same thing back in 2003.

So, what did VIIRS see? Here’s the “true color” image, the RGB composite of channels M-03 (0.488 µm, blue), M-04 (0.555 µm, green) and M-05 (0.672 µm, red):

VIIRS "true color" RGB composite of channels M-03, M-04 and M-05, taken 22:23 UTC 30 October 2012

Be sure (as with all the images) to click on the image, then on the link below the banner to see it at full resolution. (The link contains the dimensions of the full size image.)

The ash cloud (blowing right over the center of Kodiak Island) is not as obvious in this image as it was in the MODIS image in the link above, although it is visible. To be fair, the plume was much more optically thick in 2003, and there were fewer clouds and less snow to confuse it with.

Here is the false color (“pseudo-true color” or “natural color”) image, the RGB composite of channels M-05 (0.672 µm, blue), M-07 (0.865 µm, green) and M-10 (1.61 µm, red):

VIIRS false color RGB composite of channels M05, M-07 and M-10, taken 22:23 UTC 30 October 2012

Hmmm. Once again, the ash plume is visible but not particularly noticeable. Is there a way to highlight the ash plume to make it easier to see?

EUMETSAT (the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites) has defined an RGB composite for detecting dust. Their product, which was developed primarily to detect dust storms over the Saharan desert, uses channels that are present (or similar to ones that are present) on VIIRS. This means we can apply the dust product for VIIRS as the difference between M-16 and M-15 (red), the difference between M-15 and M-14 (green) and M-15 by itself (blue), all in units of brightness temperature. If you do that, and use the same color scaling they use, you get this image:

The EUMETSAT Dust RGB composite applied to VIIRS for 22:23 UTC 30 October 2012

The arrow points to the source region of the ash plume. In this RGB composite, dust shows up as hot pink (magenta), but it’s barely visible here. The reason is that this dust product is primarily useful where there is a large temperature contrast between the dust plume and the background surface, which we don’t have here.

A more common way to detect volcanic ash is to use the “split-window difference”. The “split-window difference” is the difference in brightness temperature between a 10.7-11.0 µm channel and a 12.0 µm channel. This difference is useful because volcanic ash has a difference of opposite sign to most everything else. Here’s what the split window difference (M-15 – M-16) looks like for this case:

VIIRS "Split-window difference" image from 22:23 UTC 30 October 2012

This image has been scaled so that the colors range from -1 K (black) to +7 K (white). The ash plume stands out a bit more here by being much darker than the background. The only problem is, it isn’t perfect. Large amounts of water vapor, optically thick clouds, desert surfaces and boundary layer temperature inversions can all produce a negative difference (just like volcanic ash does).

These problems can be overcome to a certain extent by combining the “split-window difference” with a Principal Component Image (PCI) analysis technique. (This technique is too complicated to describe here but, if you have access to AMS journals, check out these journal papers.) Now, the ash plume is the only thing that’s black:

VIIRS PCI analysis image from 22:23 UTC 30 October 2012

VIIRS PCI split window analysis image from 22:23 UTC 30 October 2012. Image courtesy Don Hillger. Upside-down text courtesy McIDAS-X.

Notice the smaller plume identified by the orange arrow. This plume is not easy to identify in any of the previous images. The PCI technique works well. But, we’re not going to stop there.

Remember the dust plumes off the Cape Verde islands? They produced a strong signal in the difference between M-12 (3.7 µm) and M-15 (10.7 µm) due to solar reflection. Does a 100-year-old ash plume produce a similarly strong signal? See for yourself:

VIIRS channel difference image between M-12 and M-15 from 22:23 UTC 30 October 2012

It does produce a signal, but it’s not as bright as the surrounding clouds. The color scale here ranges from -2 K (black) to +90 K (white).

M-06 (0.746 µm) is highly sensitive to anything that reflects solar radiation in the atmosphere or on the surface, which we learned from Hurricane Isaac. Here’s what the M-06 image looks like:

VIIRS channel M-06 image, taken 22:23 UTC 30 October 2012

“Big deal,” you say. “None of those are better than the PCI analysis.” That may be true, but watch what happens when we combine M-06, the M-12 – M-15 image and the split-window difference image in a single RGB composite:

VIIRS RGB composite of M06 (blue), M12 - M15 (green) and M15 - M16 (red), taken 22:23 UTC 30 October 2012

In this composite, blue values represent the M-06 reflectance scaled from 0 to 1.6, green values represent the brightness temperature difference between M-12 and M-15 scaled from -2 K to +90 K, and red values represent the brightness temperature difference between M-15 and M-16 scaled from -1 K to +7 K.

From a theoretical perspective, this RGB composite does exactly what you want: make the thing you’re trying to detect the only thing that is a certain color. For example, the ash plumes are the only things in this image that are green. From a practical perspective, however, this RGB composite doesn’t work so well. It only works because the ash plume is over water (otherwise M-06 wouldn’t be very useful). It only works during the day, where M-06 is available and the difference between M-12 and M-15 is significant (no solar component to M-12 at night).

Plus, the rainbow of colors is difficult to make sense of: green ash; clouds ranging from light blue to purple to orange (a function of optical thickness, particle size, and phase); bright purple snow; dark purple vegetation; maroon water. It’s not exactly pleasing to the eye. In contrast, the PCI analysis technique that uses the split-window difference works day and night, over ocean and over land. And it isn’t confusing to look at. Maybe we should have stopped when we got to the PCI technique. But then, we wouldn’t have learned anything new.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Alaska, ash detection, false color, M-10, M-12, M-14, M-15, M-16, M-3, M-4, M-5, M-6, M-7, RGB composite, split window difference, true color, volcano | Comments Off

Remote Islands, part III: Îles Kerguelen and Heard Island

Posted on November 9, 2012 by Curtis Seaman

“At 10 o’clock the Captain was walking on deck and saw what he supposed to be an immense iceberg. … the atmosphere was hazy, and then a heavy snow squall came up which shut it out entirely from our view. Not long after the sun shone again, and I went up again and with the glass, tried to get an outline of it to sketch its form. The sun seemed so dazzling on the water, and the tops of the apparent icebergs covered with snow; the outline was very indistinct. We were all the time nearing the object and on looking again the Captain pronounced it to be land. The Island is not laid down on the chart, neither is it in the Epitome, so we are perhaps the discoverers, … I think it must be a twin to Desolation Island, it is certainly a frigid looking place.”

VIIRS false color composite of channels I-01, I-02 and I-03, taken 09:16 UTC 27 October 2012

The text above was the journal entry of Isabel Heard, wife of the American Captain John Heard, on 25 November 1853. The couple was en route from Boston, Massachusetts to Melbourne, Australia (a long time to spend in a boat) and the land they spotted became known as Heard Island. It should be noted that “Desolation Island” refers to Îles Kerguelen, which has its own unique story of discovery.

Kerguelen Island was discovered in 1772 by Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen de Trémarec, a French navigator commissioned by King Louis XV to discover the unknown continent in the Southern Hemisphere that he believed to be necessary to balance the globe. (Look at a globe or map of the world and notice that most of the land area is in the Northern Hemisphere.) Kerguelen himself never set foot on the island, but he told his king the island was inhabited and full of forests, fruits and untold riches. He called it “La France Australe” (Southern France). Captain Cook actually did land on the island a few years later and named it Desolation Island because it had none of that stuff, and King Louis XV imprisoned Kerguelen after his lie was discovered. Oops.

Îles Kerguelen, made up of the main island (Kerguelen to us, La Grande Terre to the French) and the many small surrounding islands are part of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (Terres Australes et Antarctiques Françaises or TAAF). Heard Island is part of the Australian territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands (HIMI).

These islands are in the “Roaring Forties” and “Furious Fifties”, the region of the Southern Ocean (southern Indian Ocean in this case) between 40 °S and 60 °S latitude. Get out your globe or world map once again and notice that there is very little land in this latitude range. This region is where strong, persistent westerly winds circle the globe. With no land in the way, there isn’t much to disturb this flow. The high winds almost always from the same direction create huge waves of 10 m (33 ft) or more. (Now imagine being John or Isabel Heard. Well, actually, if you suffer from sea-sickness you probably shouldn’t imagine it.) The cold winds flow over the relatively warmer waters of the ocean, forming persistent cloudiness. If you zoom in on the image above (click on the image, then on the “1893×1452” link below the banner for full resolution) you can see quite a bit of structure in the resulting “cloud streets“.

The persistent cloudiness makes Kerguelen and Heard Island a rare sight from any satellite. We can see them here because the flow is stable and the islands are producing the equivalent of a “rain shadow” on the clouds. (It’s tempting to call it a “cloud shadow” but, since clouds actually do cast shadows, it would just confuse people.) If we zoom in on Kerguelen, this shows up more clearly:

VIIRS false-color RGB composite of channels I-01, I-02 and I-03 taken 09:16 UTC 27 October 2012

Notice how all the clouds are piling up on the west (windward) side of Kerguelen, where the highest mountains, are located. (These mountains are covered with snow and glaciers, as the cyan color indicates.) Could that be the equivalent of a bow shock near 68 °E longitude where there is an apparent crack in the clouds? On the leeward side of the island, downwind of the mountains, the air is descending, which prevents clouds from forming. Kerguelen created a hole in the clouds by disrupting the flow.

Now, let’s zoom in on Heard Island:

VIIRS false-color RGB composite of channels I-01, I-02 and I-03 taken 09:16 UTC 27 October 2012

In addition to creating a hole in the clouds, Heard Island is creating all sorts of waves in the atmosphere. The ones you probably noticed first look like the wake created by a boat (and have the same basic cause). But, why do they start well out ahead of the island where the yellow arrow is pointing? Because those first waves are actually caused by the McDonald Islands (discovered by Capt. William McDonald in 1854). Even though the highest point on McDonald Island is only 186 m above mean sea level (610 ft), it’s enough to disrupt the flow.

The highest point on Heard Island is Mawson Peak at 2745 m (9006 ft), which is actually the highest elevation in Australia. It is part of Big Ben, an active volcano that last erupted in 2008. This peak is creating a series of lenticular clouds in the above image. A patch of cirrus clouds also exists downwind of Heard Island (the more cyan colored clouds), although it is not clear if these clouds were formed by the waves caused by Heard Island.

If you’re interested in visiting either of these islands, here are some other interesting facts: Kerguelen has a year-round population of ~100, almost all scientists. It has a permanent weather station and office maintained by Météo-France (France’s version of the National Weather Service), and the French version of NASA (CNES) has a station for launching rockets and monitoring satellites. Heard Island has no permanent residents. Every few years a scientific expedition sets out for the island to study the geology, biology, weather and climate of the island. The next one is planned for 2014 and is being called an “open source expedition”. There may still be time to join in if you’re looking for an adventure!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged false color, gravity waves, Heard Island, I-1, I-2, I-3, ice and snow, Kerguelen, remote island, RGB composite, VIIRS | Comments Off

Greenland Eddies and Swirls

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Curtis Seaman

Last time we visited Greenland, it was because VIIRS saw evidence of the rapid ice melt event in July 2012. We return to Greenland because of this visible image VIIRS captured on 18 October 2012:

VIIRS channel I-01 image taken 12:43 UTC 18 October 2012

This image was taken by the high-resolution visible channel, I-01 (0.64 µm), and was cropped down to reduce the file size. Greenland is in the upper-left corner of the image. The northwest corner of Iceland is visible in the lower-left corner of the image.

So, what’s with all the swirls off the coast of Greenland? Are they clouds swirled around by winds? Or some kind of sea serpent – perhaps a leviathan or a kraken? (Based on the descriptions, they would be big enough for VIIRS to see them.)

Sadly, for all you science fiction and fantasy fanatics, those swirls are just icebergs breaking up as they enter warmer water, the chunks of ice caught up in eddies in the East Greenland Current. This is easier to see when you look at the “true color” image below:

VIIRS "true color" RGB composite of channels M-3, M-4 and M-5, taken 12:43 UTC 18 October 2012

Make sure to click on the image, then on the “3200×1536” link below the banner to see the image at full resolution. Since the true color RGB composite is made from moderate resolution channels M-03 (0.488 µm, blue), M-04 (0.555 µm, green) and M-05 (0.672 µm, red), we can include more of the swath before we get into file size issues. That allows us to see the extent of the ice break-up along the Greenland coast.

There is a lot to notice in the true color image. The large icebergs at the top of the image breakup into smaller and smaller icebergs as they float down the east coast of Greenland, until they finally melt. These visible “swirls” (or “eddies” in oceanography terms) extend from 75 °N latitude down to 68 °N latitude where the ice disappears (melts).

The upper-right corner with missing data is on the night side of the “terminator” (the line separating night from day), where we lose the amount of visible radiation needed for these channels to detect stuff. (The Day/Night Band would still collect data, however, as it is much more sensitive to the low levels of visible radiation observed at night.) See how the ice and the high clouds appear to get a bit more pink as you move from west (left) to east (right)? It’s the same reason cirrus clouds often look pink at sunset. The sun is setting on the North Atlantic and more of the blue radiation from the sun is scattered by the atmosphere than red radiation. The red radiation that’s left is then reflected off the clouds (and ice and snow) toward the satellite.

Just to prove that the swirls are indeed ice and not clouds, here’s the “pseudo-true color” (a.k.a. “natural color”) RGB composite made from channels M-05 (0.672 µm, blue), M-07 (0.865 µm, green) and M-10 (1.61 µm, red):

VIIRS natural color image of channels M-05, M-07 and M-10, taken 12:43 UTC 18 October 2012

The deep blue color of the swirls in this RGB composite is indicative of ice, not clouds. These channels are not impacted by atmospheric scattering at any sun angle, though, so there is no change in the color of the clouds as you approach the terminator.

You may have also noticed the cloud streets downwind of the icebergs off the coast of Greenland. These clouds are formed in the same way as lake-effect clouds are in the Great Lakes. Cold, arctic air flowing south over the icebergs meets the relatively warm water of the open ocean. The moisture evaporating from the warmer waters condenses in the cold air and forms clouds.

How much warmer is that water? Here’s the high-resolution infrared (IR) image (I-05, 11.45 µm):

VIIRS channel I-05 image, taken 12:43 UTC 18 October 2012

At ~375 m resolution at nadir, this is the highest resolution available in the IR on a non-classified satellite today. Look at all the structure in the cloud-free areas of the ocean! Lots of little eddies show up in the IR that are invisible in the visible and near-IR channels shown previously. The only eddies visible in the true color and natural color images are the ones that had ice floating in them. Here we see they extend much further south than the ice.

The ice-free water that is not obscured by clouds is 10-15 K warmer than where the icebergs are found. The eddies are caused by the clash between the southward flowing, cold Eastern Greenland Current and the northbound, warm North Atlantic Drift (the tail end of the Gulf Stream), which are important in the global transport of energy. They are not ship-sinking whirlpools caused by any krakens in the area – at least VIIRS didn’t observe any.

UPDATE (February 2013): Below is another image of the eddies and swirls off the eastern coast of Greenland. This “natural color” image was taken 13:34 UTC 15 February 2013:

VIIRS false color RGB composite of channels M-05, M-07 and M-10, taken 13:34 UTC 15 February 2013. Image courtesy Don Hillger.

Since it is winter, the ice extends further south along the coast before it melts. Once again, there is a lot of structure visible in the edge of the ice, where the East Greenland Current and North Atlantic Drift interact. Another thing to notice is the shadows. At the top of the image just right of center is Scoresby Sound, which is completely frozen over. Given that the sun is pretty low in the sky over Greenland in the winter (if it rises at all, since most of Greenland is north of the Arctic Circle), the mountains south of the Sound cast some pretty long shadows on the ice. It’s possible to use the length of the shadows with the solar zenith angle to estimate the height of those mountains (although there are more accurate ways to determine a mountain’s elevation from satellite). VIIRS provides impressive detail, even from the moderate resolution bands.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged false color, Greenland, I-1, I-5, ice and snow, M-10, M-3, M-4, M-5, M-7, RGB composite, sea surface temperature, true color | Comments Off

Aurora Australis from the Day-Night Band

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Curtis Seaman

How fast does an aurora move? I “googled” it, and got answers ranging from “fast” to “very fast”. Not very scientific. It also doesn’t help that the majority of aurora videos on the Internet are time-lapse footage, and there’s no way to know how fast the footage has been sped up. Although, I did find this video that claims to be real-time footage:

When the camera is still, you could try to calculate the speed of some of the aurora elements if you knew where the cameraman was, what stars were in the view (and how far apart they are), and how high up (or how far away) the aurora was at that time. All information that I don’t have.

What if I said we could estimate the speed of the aurora by examining VIIRS Day/Night Band (DNB) images?

Here’s a DNB image of the aurora australis (a.k.a. Southern Lights) over Antarctica, taken on 1 October 2012:

VIIRS DNB image of the aurora australis, taken 00:22 UTC 1 October 2012

Compare this image with the images of the aurora borealis shown back in March 2012. Something doesn’t look right. Far from looking like smooth curtains of light, the aurora (particularly the brightest one) has a jagged appearance, like a set of steps. (This is easier to notice if you click on the image to see it in higher resolution.) This is because the aurora wouldn’t stay still, and we can use this information to estimate the speed it was moving.

The stripes that you see in the image are a caused by the 16 detectors that comprise the DNB which, for various reasons, don’t have exactly the same sensitivity to light. (This condition is given a super-scientific name: “striping”.) The DNB senses light from the Earth by having a constantly rotating mirror reflect light onto these detectors. One rotation of the mirror (particularly the part that occurs within the field of view of the sensor) comprises one scan. Each detector comprises one row of pixels in each scan, each with 742 m x 742 m resolution at nadir. There are 48 scans in one “granule” (the amount of data transmitted in one data file), and it takes ~84 seconds to collect the data that make up one granule. That means it takes ~1.75 seconds per scan.

If you watch that video again, you’ll notice that the aurora can move quite a bit in 2 seconds. Now, let’s zoom in much more closely on one of the aurora elements:

Zoomed-in VIIRS DNB image of an aurora, taken 00:22 UTC 1 October 2012

This image has been rotated relative to the original image, in case you were wondering why it doesn’t seem to match up with the first image. The brightest pixels are where the brightest aurora elements were located. The “steps” (or “shifts” as they are typically called) occur every 16 pixels, which mark out the end of one scan and the beginning of the next. If you count the number of pixels that the brightest aurora elements shifted from one scan to the next, it varies from about 6 to 10 pixels. Assuming a constant resolution of 742 m per pixel along the scan (which isn’t exactly true, the resolution degrades a little bit as you get closer to the edge of the scan but not by much), that means this particular aurora element moved somewhere between ~4.5 and ~7.5 km in ~1.75 seconds from one scan to the next. Doing the math (don’t forget to carry the 1), that comes out to somewhere between 9000 and 15,000 km h^-1 (rounded to account for possible sources of error), which I guess counts as “very fast”. But, it’s not as fast as the coronal mass ejections that create auroras. They have an average speed of 489 km s^-1 (1,760,000 km h^-1)!

So, what looks like an oddity in the VIIRS image, actually contains some interesting scientific information about the speed of an “active aurora“.

But, we’re not done yet. Let’s get back to the striping. Along with “stray light”, it’s one of the few remaining issues in VIIRS imagery. Stray light, which you can see evidence of in the lower right corner of first aurora image, is a particular problem in the DNB. It occurs when sunlight is reflected onto the detectors when the satellite is on the nighttime side of the Earth, but close to the edge of the day/night “terminator“. Our colleagues at Northrup Grumman have been working on a correction to stray light that also reduces the striping. This correction allows for much better viewing of auroras, which have a tendency to occur right where stray light is an issue.

Here is an image of another aurora over Antarctica, taken on 15 September 2012, corrected for stray light and striping:

VIIRS DNB image of the aurora australis over Antarctica, taken 18:56 UTC 15 September 2012. The data used in this image was corrected for stray light and striping by Stephanie Weiss (Northrup Grumman).

This was the night of a new moon, so the only light in the scene (once the stray light is taken out) is the aurora. (OK, there may be some “air glow” and starlight. But, it doesn’t show up on this brightness scale.)

This aurora was a lot less “active” so it looks more like smooth curtains of light. Although, when you zoom in on the brightest swirl in the upper right corner, you can see it did move 3-5 pixels between scans:

VIIRS DNB image of the aurora australis, taken 18:56 UTC 15 September 2012

VIIRS DNB image of the aurora australis over Antarctica, taken 18:56 UTC 15 September 2012. This image has been zoomed in and rotated relative to the previous image of the same aurora. The data used in this image was corrected for stray light and striping by Stephanie Weiss (Northrup Grumman).

This translates to 4000 to 8000 km h^-1, which still counts as “fast” even if it doesn’t count as “very fast”. See, Google was right! Auroras do move anywhere from “fast” to “very fast”. But, now we at least have an estimate to quantify that speed.

And, in case you were wondering, these estimates of the speed of auroras are consistent with earlier observations. According to the book Aurora and Airglow by B. McCormac (1967), the typical speed of auroras is between 0 and 3 km s^-1 (up to 10,800 km h^-1). So, it appears that VIIRS does give a reasonable estimate about the speed of an aurora. We just happened to catch one “typical” aurora and one “faster than typical” aurora.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged antarctica, aurora, day/night band, resolution, VIIRS | 1 Comment

The Outback on Fire

Posted on September 21, 2012 by Curtis Seaman

I’m not talking about a Subaru. I’m talking about the vast expanse of sparsely-populated Australia. We’ve already seen fires in the United States, Russia and the Canary Islands. Well, they have been happening down under, too. (Is there any part of this planet not currently experiencing a drought?)

Despite the risk of getting fire fatigue (“Another post about fires?” *yawn*), we’re going to look at these fires for two reasons. First, it gives me a chance to show off the “fire tornado” video clip that has been making the rounds on the Internet:

Second, VIIRS saw the fire that produced the “fire tornado” (and a whole bunch of other fires) and it gives me a chance to show off the newly christened “Fire Temperature RGB”.

First, let’s look at the boring (yet still valuable) way of detecting fires: identifying hot spots in a 3.9 µm image. Here’s what VIIRS channel M-13 (4.0 µm) saw over Australia on 19 September 2012:

VIIRS channel M-13 image of central Australia, taken 04:34 UTC 19 September 2012

Pixels hotter than 350 K show up as black in this image. Given this information, how many fires can you see? (Hint: click on the image, then on the “3200×1536” link below the banner to see the image at full resolution. And, no, wise guy – you don’t count all the black pixels outside the boundaries of the data.)

Here’s the “pseudo-true color” RGB composite (this time made of M-05 [0.67 µm, blue], M-07 [0.87 µm, green], and M-10 [1.61 µm, red]):

False-color RGB composite of VIIRS channels M-05, M-07 and M-10, taken 04:34 UTC 19 September 2012

With this RGB composite, really hot fires show up as bright red pixels. More hot spots are visible in the M-13 image than the “pseudo-true color” image because M-13 is much more sensitive to the heat from fires than M-05, M-07 and M-10 are. M-10 only picks up the signal from the hottest (or biggest) fires. M-05 and M-07 don’t pick up the heat signal at all, because the radiation from the sun, reflected off the Earth’s surface, drowns it out (which is precisely why the hot spots look red). M-13 is also better at detecting fires because it works at night, unlike these three channels.

You can make the hot spots from the smaller/less hot (lower brightness temperature) fires more visible by replacing M-10 with M-11 (2.25 µm) as the red channel in the RGB composite. M-11 is more sensitive to hot spots than M-10. If you do that, you get this image:

False-color RGB composite of VIIRS channels M-05, M-07 and M-11, taken 04:34 UTC 19 September 2012

Since the previous RGB composite is often referred to as “natural color”, maybe this one should be called the “natural fire color” RGB composite. Now, most of the hot spots (not just the hottest ones) show up as red.

It should be noted that the fire complex in the grid box bounded by the 24 °S and 26 °S latitude and 128 °E and 132 °E longitude lines is where the video of the fire tornado came from. That fire is currently burning close to Uluru (a.k.a. Ayers Rock), the site where the creator beings live, according to local legend. According to an Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park newsletter from back in July, prescribed burns were taking place in and around the park, although it’s not clear if the fires seen by VIIRS now (in September) are part of the prescribed burns.

EUMETSAT recently held a workshop on RGB satellite products, where a new RGB composite was proposed for VIIRS: the “Fire Temperature RGB”, made from M-10 (1.61 µm, blue), M-11 (2.25 µm, green) and M-12 (3.70 µm, red). Here’s what that looks like:

False-color RGB composite of VIIRS channels M-10, M-11 and M-12, taken 04:34 UTC 19 September 2012

In this composite, hot spots from fires show up as yellow, orange, bright red or white, depending on how hot they are. Liquid clouds show up as light blue. Ice clouds, which are missing from this scene, typically show up as dark green. The background surface shows up as a shade of purple. Burn scars, which show up as dark brown in the “natural color” and “natural fire color” composites, show up as more of a maroon color in the “fire temperature” composite. Coincidently, maroon is the “official color” of Queensland, although it looks like most of the maroon burn scars show up in the Northern Territory.

To easily compare the different views of the fires (and make it obvious to everyone what the fires look like), here’s an animation, zoomed in on the lower left corner of each of the images above:

Animated loop of images of the fires in Australia as seen by VIIRS, 04:34 UTC 19 September 2012

The yellow highlighted areas are where the active fires are.

Now that you’ve seen several different ways of displaying fire hot spots with VIIRS, which one do you like best?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Australia, false color, fire, M-10, M-11, M-13, M-5, M-7, RGB composite, VIIRS | Comments Off

VIIRS Captures a Glimpse of Hell

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Curtis Seaman

VIIRS has seen Hell and, luckily, it did not get scared. No, I’m not talking about Hell, Michigan, which is actually a nice place (and not as scary as their website would indicate). I’m talking about the Gates of Hell (or Door to Hell, depending on who you talk to) in Turkmenistan. You can see a single video of it here and, if that isn’t enough to get a sense of it, someone compiled a list of 296 videos of the Gates of Hell near Derweze/Darvaza, Turkmenistan.

Turkmenistan doesn’t have much – 80% of it is the Karakum Desert – but it does have a lot of oil and natural gas deposits. Back in 1971, the Soviet Union wanted to take advantage of these deposits, so they began drilling a gas well near the town of Derweze. Unfortunately, the drilling opened up a sinkhole that ate the drilling rig and caused the natural gas to leak out in large quantities. Oh, no! What to do now? Light it on fire!

The team of geologists thought that the best way to prevent the town from being suffocated by the toxic fumes was to ignite the gas, let it burn itself out in a few days, and return to see what the damage was. Guess what? That fire is still burning today – 41 years later!

This constantly burning crater is only 230 ft (70 m) across. So it may come as a surprise (to some people, at least) that VIIRS has no trouble seeing it. The highest-resolution channels on VIIRS have a spatial resolution of ~375 m at nadir. The fiery pit is so visible, the Day/Night Band (DNB), with ~740 m resolution, makes the Gates of Hell look like the biggest town in central Turkmenistan:

VIIRS Day/Night Band image of Turkmenistan, taken 22:26 UTC 13 September 2012

The red arrow points out the light source that is the Gates of Hell. One other thing to note from this image is all the lights in the Caspian Sea. Those are oil rigs, with the largest light source (the one closest to the center of the Caspian Sea) being the floating/sinking city of Neft Daşları (a.k.a Oily Rocks), which sounds like a pretty interesting/sad/weird place to work.

In case you think the lights are coming from the town of Derweze and not the actual Gates of Hell, here’s a zoomed in image from the DNB along with the M-12 (3.7 µm) brightness temperatures:

VIIRS Day/Night Band image of the Derweze "Gates of Hell", Turkmenistan, taken 22:26 UTC 13 September 2012

VIIRS channel I-04 image of the Derweze "Gates of Hell", Turkmenistan, taken 22:26 UTC 13 September 2012

VIIRS channel M-12 image of the Derweze "Gates of Hell", Turkmenistan, taken 22:26 UTC 13 September 2012. The color scale ranges from 210 K (white) to 300 K (black).

The Gates of Hell is the only light source that also shows up as a 345 K hot spot in channel M-12. Since this is a nighttime image, the signal in M-12 comes only from emission from the Earth (and clouds, etc.) without any contribution from solar reflection (as there would be during the day). What you see in the M-12 image is the temperature of the objects in the scene, just like a typical infrared (IR) satellite image, except with higher sensitivity to sub-pixel heat sources. The clouds show up as cold (bright, in this color table) above the warmer (darker) land surface. Sarygamysh Lake (and a few other smaller lakes) show up as really warm (dark) because the desert floor at night cools off much more than the water does.

The moon here was only ~10% full, so there wasn’t enough light reflecting off the few clouds in the scene for the DNB to detect them. In fact, with so little moonlight, everything is dark in the DNB. Everything, that is, except for the towns, villages and flaming craters of burning methane.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged day/night band, fire, M-12, oil rig, resolution, Turkmenistan, VIIRS | Comments Off

Hurricane Isaac: Before, During and After

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Curtis Seaman

While Hurricane Isaac (then a tropical storm) did not destroy Tampa, Florida as many people feared, it certainly left its mark on the Gulf Coast. With many locations from Florida to Louisiana receiving more than 12″ of rain, and levees unable to keep out the storm surge, flooding was (and still is) a major problem. Look at these aerial photos of Isaac’s aftermath in Louisiana. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) aboard Suomi NPP saw that flooding, also.

But first, let’s look at the high resolution infrared (IR) window channel (I-05, 11.45 µm) which, at ~375 m resolution, is the highest-resolution IR window channel on a public weather satellite in space today. This image was taken when Isaac was still a tropical storm in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico:

VIIRS I-05 image of Tropical Storm Isaac, taken 18:50 UTC 27 August 2012

This image uses a new (to this blog, anyway) color scale, developed by our colleagues at CIMSS, that really highlights the structure of the clouds at the top of Isaac. The color scale is included in the image. For comparison, here’s the GOES Imager IR window channel (channel 4, 10.7 µm) image from roughly the same time:

GOES-13 Imager channel 4 image of Tropical Storm Isaac, taken 18:45 UTC 27 August 2012

GOES has ~4 km resolution in its IR channels. VIIRS provides amazing details of the structure of tropical cyclones that you just can’t get with current geostationary satellites.

The real story from Isaac, however, is the flooding. It’s hard to capture flooding from a visible and infrared imaging instrument, since flooding usually occurs when it’s cloudy. Clouds block the view of the surface when looking at visible and infrared wavelengths. But, large quantities of water that fail to evaporate or drain into the local rivers after a period of several days can be seen after the skies clear. That’s what happened with Isaac.

Here are before-Isaac and after-Isaac images of the southern tip of the Florida Peninsula. These are false color (“pseudo-true color”) composites of VIIRS channels I-01, I-02 and I-03. These images were taken on the afternoon overpasses of 23 August and 29 August 2012. Many cities on the east coast of Florida got 10-16 inches of rain (250-400 mm for those of you outside the U.S.). See if you can pick out the flooding.

False color RGB composite of VIIRS channels I-01, I-02 and I-03 taken before and after Tropical Storm Isaac (2012)

If you have been following this blog, you know that, in the “pseudo-true color” RGB composite, water shows up very dark – in most cases, almost black. That’s not always true, of course. You can see sun glint (particularly in the “before” image) that makes water a lighter color and shallow water (where visible radiation [i.e. channel I-01] is able to penetrate to the bottom) shows up as a vivid blue.

Now, notice the Everglades. Many areas of the Everglades, particularly on the east side, appear darker in the “after” image, because those swampy areas have a lot more water in them. Water has a lower reflectivity than vegetation or bare ground at these wavelengths.

The effect of water on the land surface shows up even better in the moderate resolution channel M-06 (0.75 µm). M-06 is a channel not shown before because it is perhaps the worst channel for producing interesting images. M-06 was designed to aid in ocean color retrievals and/or other uses that require atmospheric correction. The M-06 detectors saturate at a low radiance, so any radiation at 0.75 µm that reflects off of clouds, aerosols or the land surface easily show up. About the only things that have low reflectivity in M-06 are atmospheric gases and water surfaces without sun glint. Ocean color retrievals need a very clean atmosphere with no aerosols or clouds and no sun glint to work correctly. You also need to be able to identify what is or is not water, which is what makes M-06 useful for identifying flooding.

Here are the similar before-Isaac and after-Isaac images of Florida from M-06:

VIIRS channel M-06 images of southern Florida taken before and after Tropical Storm Isaac (2012)

Both the land and optically thick clouds saturate M-06, so this channel is useless at identifying clouds over land (except you can see some cloud shadows). Sun glint is saturating the pixels over the Gulf of Mexico in the “before” image, while it is mostly to the east of Florida in the Atlantic Ocean in the “after” image. In the “after image”, reflective cirrus clouds over the Gulf of Mexico show up that are not as easily visible in the RGB composite. Of primary importance here, however, is the dark appearance of the Everglades in the “after” image. All that flood water reduced the reflectivity of the land surface, making it appear darker. That means, if you know where the clouds (and, hence, the cloud shadows) are, it may be possible to use M-06 to identify large flooded areas.

Louisiana and the coast of Mississippi were the hardest hit by Isaac, and the flooding is easily visible here, too. In fact, the massive flooding is easier to see in the RGB composite in this region. Compare the “before” and “after” images, taken on 26 August 2012 and 1 September 2012:

False color RGB composites of VIIRS channels I-01, I-02 and I-03 of southeast Louisiana

To make it easier to see, here’s a quick animation of the before and after images. Watch the highlighted areas.

Animated GIF of false color RGB composites taken from VIIRS before and after Hurricane Isaac

After the passage of Hurricane Isaac, Lake Maurepas and Lake Pontchartrain almost appear to merge into one big lake! Other flooding is visible near Slidell, Bay St. Louis, Pascagoula Bay, and the heavily hit parishes of Plaquemines, St. Bernard, Lafourche and Terrebonne.

Thin cirrus clouds are visible in the “after” image, which limit the ability of M-06 to detect some of the flooding, but M-06 is still able to see the large areas of flooding highlighted in the animation above. M-06 also detects reflection off of the Twin Spans as well as the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. And this is at ~750 m resolution!

VIIRS channel M-06 images of southeastern Louisiana taken before and after Hurricane Isaac (2012)

So, don’t try to do ocean color retrievals in pixels obscured by big bridges.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged false color, flood, Florida, I-1, I-2, I-3, Isaac, Louisiana, M-6, resolution, RGB composite, tropical storm, VIIRS | Comments Off