Saturday, February 25, 2012

Arctic radiation animation


Below a part-image from www.seaice.dk and originating from the NOAA Polar Orbiter satellite's measurements of radiated heat, which provides pictures of the sea ice, as well as water vapor.

December 1, 2011, part-image from www.seaice.dk and originating from NOAA Polar Orbiter

The animation further below uses many such images and starts with five daily images showing a red area in the bay off the coast of Tiksi starting November 1, 2011. The animation continues to February 16, 2012, i.e. the last date for which images were made available when this post was written.

Large red areas show up end 2011 (particularly from November 25 till December 6) off the coast of Siberia, matching up with the dates mentioned in the earlier post Abrupt release of methane in the Arctic in late 2011.

From the very end of 2011, red areas also show up in the North of Canada.

Since methane has a very high immediate greenhouse effect, the heat detected on the images could well originate from methane releases. Furthermore, one of the indirect effects of methane releases is production of water vapor, which also has a strong greenhouse effect. Therefore, the red areas could well be seen as indications of methane releases.

Matching images like this minute by minute with AIRS images of methane could give a valuable insight in the contribution of methane to warming in the Arctic.

Below is the animation. Click on Read more if you don't see it. Note that this is a 17.7 MB file. It may take some time for the animation to fully load. 




Note that this is a 17.7 MB file. It may take some time for the animation to fully load. 

2 comments:

  1. The overall picture in the reel is like a fire that gets swept out as if by push of wind from Russian coast East to West with radiative heat events springing up all over the place to lesser degree. It looks like heat from methane release is cause and that without wind the whole Arctic would melt quick..
    I'm judging 3.5 month period starts w small red development just to East of where Russia's big river comes out to delta onto shallow Sea coast.

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  2. The color of heat flux represented and essentially rotated through both time and physically as seen from polar view along with knowledge subsequently that methane continued there in the Arctic to be relevant to heat increase location makes the picture as an art form not possible without science and government supported of space program. We can see what's happening to our planet with heat increase due to our release of fossil fuel exhaust and land conversion and stuff but still somehow leave money in politics essentially disconnected from the reality of thermodynamics.
    Two different colors essentially which tend to not mix. But about to runaway..

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