CONTACT: Patricia Viets, NOAA 3/12/98
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has placed satellite imagery of significant environmental events from around the world on line. The imagery is suitable for illustrating news and feature stories. Captions and explanations are included. The events that are monitored regularly are: fires, volcanoes, tropical storms, floods, oil spills, and snow and ice.
The following report is an example of the imagery that is available each day:
Significant events identified by Satellite Analysis Branch meteorologists and reviewed by the Operational Significant Event Imagery team on Thursday, March 12, 1998, are as follows:
Fires - The smoky conditions in Borneo appear to be improving in this GMS image. The smoke, which was very dense this time yesterday, is much lighter now. A smoky haze is still visible extending from eastern Borneo southeastward into the Java Sea and more can be seen moving northeast from the same position.
The second image in this series is significant because of what it doesn't show. AVHRR Channel 3, which generally detects hot spots on the surface quite well, seems to indicate the absence of any concentrated heat sources in eastern Borneo. There are a few scattered spots in the region and a few more somewhat concentrated spots in Malaysia, but nothing compared to the past weeks. Multichannel color and single channel imagery was processed and posted to:
http://duc9.wwb.noaa.gov/SPECIAL/FIRES/FSMind071.gif
http://duc9.wwb.noaa.gov/SPECIAL/FIRES/FSHind071.gif
Fires in Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil show up well as hot spots in this AVHRR Channel 3 image. There is a concentrated area of fires in western Venezuela and scattered ones throughout northeast Columbia. Single channel imagery was processed and posted to:
http://duc9.wwb.noaa.gov/SPECIAL/FIRES/FHSbrz071.gif
Something of a mystery in these AVHRR and TOMS (Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer) images. A large cloud can be seen extending from Southeast Asia well into the South China Sea. After some analysis we suggest that it is probably smoke from fires in Vietnam and Laos. The phenomenon shows up extremely well on the TOMS imagery which measures the concentration of particles in the air. Corresponding hot spots were seen in Laos and Vietnam indicating fires on the surface. This feature has been persisting for a few days. Multichannel color imagery was processed and posted to:
http://duc9.wwb.noaa.gov/SPECIAL/FIRES/FSMseasia071.gif
Snow and Ice - California braces for yet another powerful storm in this GOES-9 image. The spiral of low pressure is off the Oregon coast but heavy clouds are already moving in to California. More rain is certainly not welcome as the ground is still saturated from past storms. Multichannel color imagery was processed and posted to:
