Earth Observation Program Award 2012

Yei,

just got our Earth Observation Unit's Program Award. Feels good. It's because I work with good people. Thanks!

Janne

One picture tells more than a thousands words...

Hey, related to the previous post. Today, NASA's Earth Observatory website published a very powerful image acquired by VIIRS/Suomi NPP.

By looking the difference between North and South Korea you can tell the difference between the Republic and the Democratic People's Republic. Or as the Earth Observatory puts it

City lights at night are a fairly reliable indicator of where people live. But this isn’t always the case, and the Korean Peninsula shows why. As of July 2012, South Korea’s population was estimated at roughly 49 million people, and North Korea’s population was estimated at about half that number. But where South Korea is gleaming with city lights, North Korea has hardly any lights at all—just a faint glimmer around Pyongyang.

Finally, a little joke for the readers who can understand Finnish

Täällä Radio Jerevan. Kysykää meiltä mitä te haluatte, me vastaamme teille mitä me haluamme.

• Meiltä kysytään:

Mitä eroa on demokratialla ja kansandemokratialla?

• Me vastaamme:

Sama kuin paidalla ja pakkopaidalla.

Janne

Powerful images

Yesterday I heard an interesting talk by TROPOMI PI Pepijn Veefkind. During the talk he shared his emotions about the firsts TOMS total ozone images of Antarctic ozone depletion, that were published when he was 16 years old. The images of the ozone hole revealed quit accurately what was going on and you didn't need to be a scientist to understand them. Similarly, he pointed out, that the OMI NO₂ images reveal the "true" pollution situation, e.g., in Europe, China and Eastern United States. And, even if governments don't like the fact, satellites  provide quite objective view about it.

That got me thinking how the Earth observation from space has changed the view we see our planet. One could ask, what was our picture about the Earth before satellites. And how did the first "blue marble" images of Earth changed it? How have the night-time images changed our knowledge? And what else have we learned from the satellite images?

I know, that illustrating the data is not always objective. And often the data are illustrated so that it supports the story. Often this is justified, sometimes maybe not. Anyway, to see more powerful images I recommend NASA's Earth Observatory site. Especially, its "Image of the day"-section.

A powerful image can be found anywhere. Do yourself a favor and go find the originals.

Janne

FLDART

Hey,

submitted a paper today. It has a fancy title

A dilemma of the uniqueness of weather and climate model closure parameters

 Janne

Smoke rings from volcanos

Hey,

today I learned something cool. Under some special circumstances volcanos can do smoke  rings. Apparently it's very rare and still a mystery to the volcanologists. Here's a figure from Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruption:

And here's a figure from Etna:

Link: http://news.discovery.com/earth/iceland-volcano-smoke-ring.html
Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/696953.stm

Janne

P.s. I can do the same thing with my mouth...

Ozone day 2012 – part 2

Hey,

today I read an interesting article from NASA's Earth Observatory website that I would like to share with you:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=79198

The article includes a nice animation of ozone

http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/79000/79198/ozone_daily_1979-2011_web.h264.mov

See also the "further reading" section, especially the interview with P. K. Bhartia

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/bhartia-qa.html

Like two snowflakes, two ozone holes are never alike – P. K. Bhartia

And here is yet another link for ozone monitoring:

http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html


No more links...

Janne

Ozone day 2012 – 25 years from the Montreal protocol

Did you know that...

September 16 was designated by the United Nations General Assembly as the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer. This designation was made on December 19, 1994, in commemoration of the date, in 1987, on which nations signed the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.

Source: Wikipedia

Here's a little animation of this year's ozone:

Some links:

• http://www.temis.nl/protocols/o3hole/
• http://www.theozonehole.com/

Nighttime view of fires -- how cool is that!?

See this article from NASA's Earth Observatory website.

The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite (S-NPP) carries an instrument so sensitive to low light levels that it can detect wildfires in the middle of the night.

The images look really cool!

Janne

Variational ensemble Kalman filtering using limited memory BFGS

Hey,

Antti's paper "Variational ensemble Kalman filtering using limited memory BFGS" got published!

Check it out!

http://etna.ricam.oeaw.ac.at/volumes/2011-2020/vol39/abstract.php?vol=39&pages=271-285

Janne

Summer's ending... Final version of the NO3 paper

Hey,

I think this summer must be ending, since I have to go back to the office next Monday. And it reminds me that I did not post anything about the summer school. Well, that's alright, I guess...

Anyway, I decided to make this post to advertise the final version of the GOMOS - SAGE III - NO3 paper. You can find it here: http://www.atmos-meas-tech.net/5/1841/2012/amt-5-1841-2012.html

Ciao,
Janne

CSC summer school

Hey,

it is summer now :-) At least, last weekend it was midsummer festival and now I am summer schooling in Nuuksio.

Maybe I should try to blog something about the summer school and what I've learned (so hopefully something about high-performance computing...)

If not...

Have a nice summer!

Janne

Goodbye GOMOS and Envisat

ESA declares end of mission for Envisat 

Just weeks after celebrating its tenth year in orbit, communication with the Envisat satellite was suddenly lost on 8 April. Following rigorous attempts to re-establish contact and the investigation of failure scenarios, the end of the mission is being declared.

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM1SXSWT1H_index_0.html 

Envisat in trouble

Hey,

if you have not heard already Envisat has a major problem:

http://www.esa.int/esaEO/SEMQ2EHWP0H_index_0.html

Investigations continue:

http://www.esa.int/esaEO/SEM2HNKWZ0H_index_0.html

Anyway, it seems that this is it...

Janne

Atmospheric Remote Sensing group

Hey,

our research group got, finally, a new homepage:

http://ikaweb.fmi.fi/

From there you can see for example a very old picture of me :-)

Check it out!

Janne

GOMOS 10 years

I'm more than fashionably late, but anyway.. Happy birthday GOMOS!

If you don't know who GOMOS is, you can check out some GOMOS ozone profiles during arctic ozone hole period from "figurettinas" or study some of the links..

Ilmatieteen laitoksen tiedote:
http://ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/tiedote/484297

Long live GOMOS!

Janne

Papers online

Hola!

This week has been good to us. We got two papers published.

The first paper deals with the closure parameter estimation in chaotic systems and the second one shows direct comparisons of GOMOS and SAGE III NO₃ vertical profiles.

Both of the papers are available online:

• http://www.nonlin-processes-geophys.net/19/127/2012/npg-19-127-2012.html
• http://www.atmos-meas-tech-discuss.net/5/1497/2012/amtd-5-1497-2012.html

Check them out!

Janne

Suomi NPP

Ciao,

huomasitteko, että NASA nimesi NPP-satelliitin Suomi NPP:ksi kunniottaaksen Vener "the father of satellite meteorology" Suomea.

Linkkejä:
http://npp.gsfc.nasa.gov/
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NPP/news/suomi.html

Suomi NPP:n kyydissä on mm. VIIRS-intstrumentti, jonka mittauksista voidaan tehdä hienoja "Blue Marble"-kuvia.

Kerraassaan hienoa!

Janne

First post

Hey,

This is a weblog of Janne Hakkarainen and the "pages" of the blog will also act as a research web site of the same guy.

I will put some figurettinas here when something interesting happens.  Click here to see what happened, among other things in 2011.

Ciao,
Janne