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[...] If you have ever watched smoke billowing from a wildfire, ash erupting from a volcano, or dust blowing in the wind, you have seen aerosols. Satellites like Terra, Aqua, Aura, and Suomi NPP “see” them as well, though they offer a completely different perspective from hundreds of kilometers above Earth’s surface. A version of a NASA model called the Goddard Earth Observing System Forward Processing (GEOS FP) offers a similarly expansive view of the mishmash of particles that dance and swirl through the atmosphere.
The visualization above highlights GEOS FP model output for aerosols on August 23, 2018. On that day, huge plumes of smoke drifted over North America and Africa, three different tropical cyclones churned in the Pacific Ocean, and large clouds of dust blew over deserts in Africa and Asia. The storms are visible within giant swirls of sea salt aerosol (blue), which winds loft into the air as part of sea spray . Black carbon particles (red) are among the particles emitted by fires; vehicle and factory emissions are another common source. Particles the model classified as dust are shown in purple. The visualization includes a layer of night light data collected by the day-night band of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on Suomi NPP that shows the locations of towns and cities.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday August 28 2018, @02:17PM (1 child)
That is a trippy map projection, I like it.
Wunderground recently introduced a similar wind tracking thing too. I haven't used it for any serious astronomy yet, but it is interesting.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by MyOpinion on Thursday August 30 2018, @09:10PM
Agreed it is good isn't it? And there is more to it: a few months back there was an azimuth-equidistant map projection ("AE") option, and when selected the map started centered on the North pole (like the "United Nations"' flag). Some time after that, that option was tweaked and it started centered on Antarctica. The central point for the AE projection could still be panned around, but it was impossible to bring it to the North pole by hand.
After a couple more weeks the "AE" option was silently and completely removed.
Shame, in my opinion, the circulation and flow of water and winds was very interesting to watch in a North-pole centered Azimuthal Equidistant projection.
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