Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal

View of the Iceland ash cloud taken Saturday midday by NASA Terra Satellite. Click image for full res.

The winds aloft are blowing the ash mainly over the Atlantic today.

Wind flow at around 18,000 feet (500hpk) for Midnight Sunday. NOAA Numerical Weather model (GFS). (The red and blue shading is vorticity-weather geek stuff, just look at the black lines and my arrow toward the UK.)

Some of it is rotating around an upper level low and causing problems in Spain. The wind flow in the mid levels of the atmosphere will blow it more toward the UK and Europe starting late Sunday.  Heathrow and Gatwick could very well be affected.

The ash is up to around 5,000 meters today. Transatlantic flights can get above it. If it gets higher (above 30,000 feet), then more widespread disruptions are likely.

The same satellite also passed over the Gulf just before Noon. It got a great shot of the oil.

See below.

Oil slick is visible at the middle bottom of the pic. Click image for full resolution.

Late word tonight is that the attempt to put a cover over it has failed. Ice is forming in it.

This is probably from the sudden drop in pressure as the oil escapes the sea bed. The tremendous pressure differences between the sub surface and the sea bed are likely involved. The same differences in pressure from the sea floor to the surface will also make this EXTREMELY difficult.

You can demonstrate this to yourself by rapidly letting the air out of your car tires while holding onto the valve. Feel how cold it gets??

Dan

NASA MODIS Satellite pass over the Iceland Volcano today. Huge ash cloud visible but it is not being blown toward Europe (as of now at least). Click image for much higher resolution.

The upper level winds are not blowing the ash toward the UK today and that is very good news. If they were, there would be widespread cancellations of flights. The cloud is especially thick.

One way to see the ash is to use a little trick. By looking at the brightness (temp.) difference between two channels on the image, the ash shows up very well. This is an animated gif, and will take awhile to load.

The good news is that late today the eruption has become much quieter and the ash is not as high as earlier.

Geological experts in Iceland are reporting that there are no signs the eruption will end anytime soon.

Sensors on most of the weather satellites are not really designed to see the ash. There has been a lot of work recently to use the available sensors to see as much as possible. The best way to see it is to use LIDAR. This is a form of radar using lasers. The UK Met office has had considerable luck using this from the ground to look at the ash cloud over the UK.

This event and the oil slick in the Gulf highlight the incredible usefulness of using remote sensing instruments in orbit. They pay for themselves many times over. The USA and Europe have fallen behind in putting these sensors on orbital platforms.

The technology is there, we just need to use it.

Here below is the latest view of the oil slick in the Gulf. Keep in mind you are only seeing the heaviest patch of oil. It is much more widespread than it appears.

True colour image from NASA's Aqua satellite. The thickest oil shows up well. It now appears the oil slick has moved west of the mouth of the Mississippi. Click image for much bigger view.

The movement of both the ash and the oil are very dependent on the atmospheric winds. The winds may start blowing the ash back toward Europe next week. The oil is much more difficult to predict…

Dan

The Iceland Volcano ash cloud is clearly visible in this image taken from space today. Image from NASA Aqua satellite in true colour. click image for much bigger version.

The ash is back.

Ireland has just announced airspace closings for tomorrow and there is now concern that the ash may start to seriously effect flights in the UK. If Gatwick and Heathrow in London shut down the impact will be felt worldwide.

Winds at 10,000 feet for tomorrow night. Wind will flow paralell to the black lines. Model data ctsy. Penn State.

Looking at the model data tonight, the greatest threat seems to be Ireland but there may be a narrow window late tomorrow when the ash will be funneled by the upper level winds toward the UK. Late in the week a high will build south of Iceland and this should keep the ash away from Europe for a few days.

One bit of good news. The ash is mainly below 20,000 feet. This means a transatlantic flright from Amsterdam or Paris will be able to fly well above it.

The airspace shut down a couple of weeks ago was much more severe because the ash was up to 34,000 feet. (I know I usually do all metric on this blog but air traffic around the world still uses flight levels in feet)

Now another image from the same satellite.

In the previous post I showed the image from the Aqua satellite pass over Nashville today.

I went back and grabbed a shot taken just about a year ago of the same area. The before and after images show very well the magnitude of the floods.

Here is the image from May 21 2009.

AQUA image of Nashville and Middle TN. on 21 May 2009. Nashville is dead center in the image. The Cumberland River is visible but not easily. Click for full res. Ctsy. NASA.

Now here is the image from my previous post showing the same area today at 1850 GMT (1:50 pm local Nashville time).

The image taken today shows the magnitude of the severe flood.

Could this flood be related to climate change? Possibly. I wrote a post on that a few days ago.

More soon,

Dan

The Spirit Rover on Mars hasn’t been heard from in a few weeks now.

This was expected because it’s winter up there and the sunlight, and the cold, have drained the batteries. It is assumed that Spirit went into hibernation mode as it was designed to do. Hopefully it will wake up in the Spring.

Hopefully.

There are no guarantees and we cannot claim we didn’t get our moneys worth. They were designed for 90 days. They’ve been going for 5 years!!

Now, here is the rabidly cool part.

Before it hibernated, it took pics of where it was parked for the winter. On a slope, so that the solar panels would face south and get a bit more sun.

It took pictures of itself and of the surrounding area. Using newly developed software, NASA created an image of Spirit sitting on Mars from Spirit’s own pictures. The image below shows what you would see standing a few feet from Spirit on Mars! It’s not a simulation. It’s taken by the camera you see on the Rover!

All I can say is DUDE!

Here it is below:

Spirit Rover on Mars. The camera that took the picture is on the white mast. Click the image for a much larger version!

I wonder what is around that bend up ahead….

dan

NOAA released the first image from GOES 15 today. It will be checked out and then put in orbital storage until we lose either the GOES EAST or GOES WEST. Both are still working and will last awhile longer yet .

This satellite is really not considerably different from the ones in use now. The next generation coming in a few years will be MUCH better and will revolutionise satellite meteorology and forecasting.

The first image is below. Click on it to get the FULL RES. BIG FILE!