Monthly Archives: December 2016

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The Arctic

It's been quite a year in the Arctic. Over the winter 2015/6 we had the strongest and coldest Arctic polar vortex of the last 68 years. This contributed to a low maximum in Arctic sea ice extent. At that stage only the locals and the scientists were looking, and I wrote about this in a blog post called Arctic sea ice 2016. This was followed by the joint second lowest Arctic summer sea ice extent.

Unusual weather in the early winter led to records being broken and the sea ice the Arctic sea has been the lowest recorded in the satellite record for the time of year.

Where are we at the Northern winter solstice?

The mean Arctic sea ice for the years 1989-93 on 21 December, the sea ice concentration on 21 December 2016 and the difference between the two data sets. Blue shades imply more sea ice and reds imply decreased sea ice compared with the mean. The original data come from the DMSP SMMI data set at the NSIDC.
The mean Arctic sea ice for the years 1989-93 on 21 December, the sea ice concentration on 21 December 2016 and the difference between the two data sets. Blue shades imply more sea ice and reds imply decreased sea ice compared with the mean. The original data come from the DMSP SMMI data set at the NSIDC.

The ice edges have retreated compared with 1989 - but as I wrote about in Record Low Arctic Sea Ice Extent we still have the very low sea ice concentration in the Barents Sea. There is also  still a very low concentration region north of the Bering Strait but the the Chukchi Sea and Hudson Bay have mostly frozen over.

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Today is 105 years since Roald Amundsen, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, Oscar Wisting and  Olav Bjaaland reached the South Pole. And Google have celebrated that fact with a google Doodle:

Amundsen expedition South Pole Google Doodle
Amundsen expedition South Pole Google Doodle

I love the doodle. It's beautiful art.

But it falls on me to be a bit of a bore...

The doodle shows mountains, and south pole is on an extremely flat plateau. Amundsen named it the King Haakon VII's Plateau.

The doodle shows it's snowing quite heavily. Actually South Pole is technically a desert, and almost no snow falls. The snow does drift in the winds though.

The doodle shows it's dark... The sun comes above the horizon at South Pole in September and it doesn't set until March. When Amundsen and the team arrived it would have been 24 hour daylight.

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I was asked “what is an easy way to get a satellite image into Google Earth?”. Once I explained how I do it I thought it may be of interest to others. NASA have provided a really excellent web interface to some of their visual data called Worldview.

The Worldview description puts into perspective how good it is.

The Worldview tool from NASA's EOSDIS provides the capability to interactively browse global, full-resolution satellite imagery and then download the underlying data. Most of the 200+ available products are updated within three hours of observation, essentially showing the entire Earth as it looks "right now"

More than 200 data products within three hours…

Open worldview and this is the screen you are greeted with. It is easy to use. The key regions are the projection / copy / link tool in the yellow square on the right, the date control in the yellow box on the bottom of the browser screen and the layers control in the yellow box on the left.

Worldview opening screen.
Worldview opening screen.

I do recommend following the tour to find your way around the data sets.

Worldview tour screen
Worldview tour screen

If you click the layers button (red on the left) this is just a part of the choice of real time data you can easily access.

Some of the data choices available in WorldView
Some of the data choices available in Worldview

So you select the data you want to see, and then you can zoom in and easily download areas of interest. For some reason I always seem to find my way at this view

Worldview Antarctic stereographic view.
Worldview Antarctic stereographic view.

This movie I made shows how you can get  imagery from Worldview easily into Google Earth.

I hope you find this useful. It's easy to spend a lot of time looking at this data.