The east coast of Australia is on fire!

There’s an ongoing serious situation in Australia: the bush in New South Wales and Queensland is on fire.

Here’s a look at what the Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) on Himawari-8 saw on 8 November 2019: click here.

What you see in that loop is the “Natural Fire Color RGB” (known to American forecasters as the “Day Land Cloud Fire RGB”) on the left (link to PDF description here), and the “Fire Temperature RGB” on the right (link to PDF description here). These are precisely the products we debuted on this blog seven years ago when we first looked at fires in Australia. Except, now there is a difference: the “Natural Fire Color RGB” is now made with the 3.7 µm band as the red component (replacing the 2.25 µm band I used originally), since the 3.7 µm channel is even better at detecting fires. This also means that we can produce the VIIRS version using “I-band” resolution (375 m). AHI, used in the loop I linked to above, has 2 km resolution* for the mid- and shortwave infrared (IR) bands.

Along the coast, near the northern edge of the images is Brisbane, the third largest city in Australia. Near the southern edge of those images is Sydney, the largest city in Australia. As you can see from Himawari-8, much of the area between the two is on fire. And, this is not the “Outback” where very few people live. This region contains some of the highest population density in Australia, and it’s also prime habitat for koalas, which don’t live anywhere outside of eastern Australia (except in zoos).

It’s no secret that resolution plays in big role in fire detection from satellites. We’ve covered this many times before. But, to hammer the point home (bit of American slang), here’s the resolution difference between VIIRS and AHI in full view from 3:50 UTC on 7 November 2019:

Himawari-8 AHI Day Land Cloud Fire RGB composite of bands 2, 4, and 7 (03:50 UTC, 7 November 2019)

Himawari-8 AHI Day Land Cloud Fire RGB composite of bands 2, 4, and 7 (03:50 UTC, 7 November 2019)

S-NPP VIIRS Day Land Cloud Fire RGB composite of bands I-1, I-2 and I-4 (03:49 UTC, 7 November 2019)

S-NPP VIIRS Day Land Cloud Fire RGB composite of bands I-1, I-2 and I-4 (03:49 UTC, 7 November 2019)

As always, click on each image to bring up the full resolution version. If you just look at the elephant-thumbnail-sized images above without clicking on them, you might get the impression that fires are easier to spot with AHI than with VIIRS. That’s because AHI makes it appear that the entire 2km-wide pixel* is full of fire, when a fire typically only fills a very small percentage of the total area of the pixel. With 375 m resolution**, VIIRS more accurately pinpoints the locations of fire activity. Although, it should be noted that even this is still a larger scale than most fire fronts. To be really accurate, you need something with the resolution of Landsat’s OLI, or a similar radiometer attached to an aircraft – except these high-resolution instruments don’t provide full global coverage multiple times daily like VIIRS, or hemispheric coverage every 10 minutes like AHI. (*On AHI [and ABI and AMI] pixels may be approximated as square-shaped solid angles that are projected onto the curved surface of the Earth from a point roughly 36,000 km above the Equator. 2 km is the width of an IR pixel at the sub-satellite point [on the Equator], where the resolutions are the highest. **VIIRS pixel resolutions vary across the swath by a factor of 2 between nadir and edge of scan, as we shall see. 375 m is the nadir value.)

For completeness, we can do the same comparison with the Fire Temperature RGB:

Himawari-8 AHI Fire Temperature RGB composite of bands 5, 6 and 7 (03:50 UTC, 7 November 2019)

Himawari-8 AHI Fire Temperature RGB composite of bands 5, 6 and 7 (03:50 UTC, 7 November 2019)

S-NPP VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB composite of bands M-10, M-11 and M-12 (03:46 UTC, 7 November 2019)

S-NPP VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB composite of bands M-10, M-11 and M-12 (03:46 UTC, 7 November 2019)

This time, we’re comparing 2 km resolution (AHI) against 750 m resolution (VIIRS), so the differences aren’t as stark. But, this is a good opportunity to remind everyone that the Fire Temperature RGB provides information on fire intensity, while the Natural Fire Color (Day Land Cloud Fire) RGB provides information on fire detections (plus smoke and burn scars), and should be used more as a “fire mask”.

There’s another resolution difference that is easy to see from these fires, and it can be quite significant. I first noticed it when looking at this animation I made of the VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB from 1-11 November 2019:

Animated GIF of VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB images (1-11 November 2019)

Animated GIF of VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB images (1-11 November 2019)

You have to click on the animation to get it to play.

Did you notice the same thing I did? You probably noticed the explosive growth of the fires from 7-9 November, but that’s not what I’m talking about. (Hint: Pay close attention to the nighttime images.) At night, without any sunlight present, you lose information on clouds and the background land surface, and only the fires are visible (unless they are obscured by clouds). That’s where today’s feature of interest resides. I’ll zoom in on some of the fires from 5 November 2019 to make it easier to see:

Animated GIF of VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB images (5 November 2019)

Animated GIF of VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB images (5 November 2019)

The image from 14:01 UTC comes from S-NPP, while the image from 14:52 comes from NOAA-20. Is NOAA-20 better than S-NPP at detecting the fires? Well, the reverse happened two nights later:

Animated GIF of VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB images (7 November 2019)

Animated GIF of VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB images (7 November 2019)

This time, the fires appear hotter (brighter) in the 15:03 UTC image, which came from S-NPP. The 14:12 UTC image came from NOAA-20. Here’s a sequence of three images from 10 November where the NOAA-20 image is sandwiched by two S-NPP images:

Animated GIF of VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB images (10 November 2019)

Animated GIF of VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB images (10 November 2019)

So, why do the fires appear brighter in some images and not others? It’s possible that the fires are becoming more active in the middle image (due to an increase in winds, for example), but it’s more likely that you are seeing the direct result of resolution differences between the various overpasses. “But, I thought both VIIRS instruments had the same resolution,” you might say as though it were a question. And that statement would suggest that you forgot about the “bowtie-effect”. (Not the effect that has anything to do with diamonds, but the effect I wrote a whole chapter about here [PDF].) If you read the **above you would already know that the resolution of VIIRS degrades by a factor of two between nadir and the edge of scan. And, if you didn’t already know, NOAA-20 and S-NPP are positioned in space a half-orbit apart. This means that, in the time it takes between a NOAA-20 overpass and a S-NPP overpass, the Earth has rotated by half the width of the swath (approximately). So, when one VIIRS instrument views something at nadir, it will be close to the edge of scan on the other satellite (and have more coarse resolution as a result).

So, in the last animation, the first image (14:05 UTC) is S-NPP viewing the fires from the east near the edge of scan, the middle image (14:56 UTC) is NOAA-20 viewing the fires near nadir, and the third image is S-NPP viewing the fires from the west – even closer to the edge of scan. (Plus, the terrain is sloping away from S-NPP in the last image as well.)

Those factors contribute to the changing appearance of the fires. They also highlight the value of having two VIIRS instruments in space: if one satellite doesn’t get a good look at a fire, the other one likely will.

By the way, these fires have been producing a lot of smoke. Here is a loop of VIIRS True Color images from 6-11 November:

 

And the view from the ground is even more apocalyptic:

UHF/VHF

Take a second to think about what would happen if Florida was hit by four hurricanes in one month.

Would the news media get talking heads from both sides to argue whether or not global warming is real by yelling at each other until they have to cut to a commercial? Would Jim Cantore lose his mind and say “I don’t need to keep standing out here in this stuff- I quit!”? Would we all lose our minds? Would our economy collapse? (1: yes. 2: every man has his breaking point. 3: maybe not “all”. 4: everybody panic! AHHH!)

It doesn’t have to just be Florida. It could be four tropical cyclones making landfall anywhere in the CONUS (and, maybe, Hawaii) in a 1-month period. The impact would be massive. But, what about Alaska?

Of course, Alaska doesn’t get “tropical cyclones” – it’s too far from the tropics. But, Alaska does get monster storms that are just as strong that may be the remnants of tropical cyclones that undergo “extratropical transition“. Or, they may be mid-latitude cyclones or “Polar lows” that undergo rapid cyclogenesis. When they are as strong as a hurricane, forecasters call them “hurricance force” (HF) lows. And guess what? Alaska has been hit by four HF lows in a 1-month period (12 December 2015 – 6 January 2016).

With very-many HF lows, some of which were ultra-strong, we might call them VHF or UHF lows. (Although, we must be careful not to confuse them with the old VHF and UHF TV channels, or the Weird Al movie.) In that case, let’s just refer to them as HF, shall we?

The first of these HF storms was a doozy – tying the record for lowest pressure ever in the North Pacific along with the remnants of Typhoon Nuri. Peak winds with system reached 122 mph (106 kt; 196 k hr-1; 54 m s-1) in Adak, which is equivalent to a Category 2 hurricane!

Since Alaska is far enough north, polar orbiting satellites like Suomi-NPP provide more than 2 overpasses per day. Here’s an animation from the VIIRS Day/Night Band, one of the instruments on Suomi-NPP:

Animation of VIIRS Day/Night Band images of the Aleutian Islands (12-14 December 2015)

Animation of VIIRS Day/Night Band images of the Aleutian Islands (12-14 December 2015).

It’s almost like a geostationary satellite! (Not quite, as I’ll show later.) This is the view you get with just 4 images per day. (The further north you go, the more passes you get. The Interior of Alaska gets 6-8 passes, while the North Pole itself gets all 15.) Seeing the system wrap up into a symmetric circulation would be a thing of beauty, if it weren’t so destructive. Keep in mind that places like Adak are remote enough as it is. When a storm like this comes along, they are completely isolated from the rest of Alaska!

Here’s the same animation for the high-resolution longwave infrared (IR) band (I-5, 11.5 ยตm):

Animation of VIIRS I-5 images of the Aleutian Islands (12-14 December 2015)

Animation of VIIRS I-5 images of the Aleutian Islands (12-14 December 2015).

I’ve mentioned Himawari before on this blog. Well, Himawari’s field of view includes the Aleutian Islands. Would you like to see how this storm evolved with 10 minute temporal resolution? Of course you would.

Here is CIRA’s Himawari Geocolor product for this storm:

Here is a loop of the full disk RGB Airmass product applied to Himawari. Look for the storm moving northeast from Japan and then rapidly wrapping up near the edge of the Earth. This is an example of something you can’t do with VIIRS, because VIIRS does not have any detectors sensitive to the 6-7 ยตm water vapor absorption band, which is one of the components of the RGB Airmass product. The RGB Airmass and Geocolor products are very popular with forecasters, but they’re too complicated to go into here. You can read up on the RGB Airmass product here, or visit my collegue D. Bikos’ blog to find out more about this storm and these products.

You might be asking how we know what the central pressure was in this storm. After all, there aren’t many weather observation sites in this part of the world. The truth is that it was estimated (in the same way the remnants of Typhoon Nuri were estimated) using the methodology outlined in this paper. I’d recommend reading that paper, since it’s how places like the Ocean Prediction Center at the National Weather Service estimate mid-latitude storm intensity when there are no surface observations. I’ll be using their terminology for the rest of this discussion.

Less than 1 week after the first HF storm hit the Aleutians, a second one hit. Unfortunately, this storm underwent rapid intensification in the ~12 hour period where there were no VIIRS passes. Here’s what Storm #2 looked like in the longwave IR according to Himawari. And here’s what it looked like at full maturity according to VIIRS:

VIIRS DNB image (23:17 UTC 18 December 2015)

VIIRS DNB image (23:17 UTC 18 December 2015).

VIIRS I-5 image (23:17 UTC 18 December 2015)

VIIRS I-5 image (23:17 UTC 18 December 2015).

Notice that this storm is much more elongated than the first one. Winds with this one were only in the 60-80 mph range, making it a weak Category 1 HF low.

Storm #3 hit southwest Alaska just before New Year’s, right at the same time the Midwest was flooding. This one brought 90 mph winds, making it a strong Category 1 HF low. This one is bit difficult to identify in the Day/Night Band. I mean, how many different swirls can you see in this image?

VIIRS DNB image (13:00 UTC 30 December 2015)

VIIRS DNB image (13:00 UTC 30 December 2015).

(NOTE: This was the only storm of the 4 to happen when there was moonlight available to the DNB, which is why the clouds appear so bright. The rest of the storms were illuminated by the sun during the short days and by airglow during the long nights.) The one to focus on is the one of the three big swirls closest to the center of the image (just above and right of center). It shows up a little better in the IR:

VIIRS I-5 image (13:00 UTC 30 December 2015)

VIIRS I-5 image (13:00 UTC 30 December 2015).

The colder (brighter/colored) cloud tops are the clue that this is the strongest storm, since all three have similar brightness (reflectivity) in the Day/Night Band. If you look close, you’ll also notice that this storm was peaking in intensity (reaching mature stage) right as it was making landfall along the southwest coast of Alaska.

Storm #4 hit the Aleutians on 6-7 January 2016 (one week later), and was another symmetric/circular circulation. This storm brought winds of 94 mph (2 mph short of Category 2!) The Ocean Prediction Center made this animation of its development as seen by the Himawari RGB Airmass product. Or, if you prefer the Geocolor view, here’s Storm #4 reaching mature stage. But, this is a VIIRS blog. So, what did VIIRS see? The same storm at higher spatial resolution and lower temporal resolution:

Animation of VIIRS DNB images of the Aleutian Islands (6-7 January 2016)

Animation of VIIRS DNB images of the Aleutian Islands (6-7 January 2016).

Animation of VIIRS I-5 images of the Aleutian Islands (6-7 January 2016)

Animation of VIIRS I-5 images of the Aleutian Islands (6-7 January 2016).

This storm elongated as it filled in and then retrograded to the west over Siberia. There aren’t many hurricanes that do that after heading northeast!

So, there you have it: 4 HF lows hitting Alaska in less than 1 month, with no reports of fatalities (that I could find) and only some structural damage. Think that would happen in Florida?

Indian Super-Smog

We’ve poked a lot of fun at China and their serious smog problem. (Just this week, Beijing schools had their very first “smog day.” It’s just like a “snow day”, except you can’t go outside and write your name in it.) But, as it turns out, China is not the only country to produce super-thick smog. India does it, too. And, from the point of view of human health, India’s smog may actually be worse!

The World Health Organization just released a list of the Top 20 smoggiest cities, and 13 of them are in India (plus 1 in Bangladesh and 3 in Pakistan). Not a single Chinese city was anywhere in the Top 20! I’d consider taking back some of things I’ve said about China, except that 1) I never lied (although I did quote Brian Williams), and 2) the Chinese government is now instituting “smog days” because the smog is so bad. What I will do is stop comparing every type of air pollution to Chinese smog. From now on (at least until they start making some positive changes), India is the paragon of poor air quality on this blog.

Since VIIRS has no trouble seeing Chinese smog, it should have no problem seeing Indian smog. And it doesn’t:

VIIRS True Color RGB composite of channels M-4, M-4 and M-5 (07:14 UTC 18 November 2015)

VIIRS True Color RGB composite of channels M-4, M-4 and M-5 (07:14 UTC 18 November 2015).

You guessed it: all that gray area is optically thick smog! Let’s not forget, too, that India is the seventh largest country in world (2.4% of the Earth’s total surface area!), which is quite a large area to be covered by smog.

In the True Color image above from 18 November 2015, you can see that the people of Tibet are grateful for the Himalayas, which are an effective barrier to the smog. They may not get much air up there on the highest plateau in the world, but what little there is is much cleaner than what’s down below!

If your respiratory system is sensitive to this kind of thing, you might not want to read any further. Consider this your trigger warning. For those few brave enough to continue – prepare yourself, because it gets worse!

Here’s another VIIRS True Color image from 14 November 2015:

VIIRS True Color RGB composite of channels M-3, M-4 and M-5 (06:50 UTC 14 November 2015)

VIIRS True Color RGB composite of channels M-3, M-4 and M-5 (06:50 UTC 14 November 2015).

Now it’s even harder to see the background surface along the base of the Himalayas. And, it’s easy to compare India’s pollution with Burma’s – I mean Myanmar’s – clean air.

VIIRS passed over the center of India on 11 November 2015 and saw that almost the entire country was covered by smog, with the thickest smog near Delhi:

VIIRS True Color RGB composite of channels M-3, M-4 and M-5 (07:46 UTC 11 November 2015)

VIIRS True Color RGB composite of channels M-3, M-4 and M-5 (07:46 UTC 11 November 2015).

November 11th was the night of Diwali, the Hindu, Sikh and Jain “Festival of Lights” celebrating the “triumph of goodness over evil and knowledge over ignorance.” If you clicked that link and thought, “that doesn’t look so bad,” then note that the first few pictures were taken in England. In India, it was much smokier. I guess lighting all those fireworks in India comes with this “pro”: they can light the way through the thick smog; and this “con”: they give off smoke that adds to the thick smog. And, while the smog didn’t stop people from celebrating Diwali, it did affect people’s plans. It also caused a huge increase in the market for air purifiers.

The super-smog was not confined to November or Diwali. It’s still going on! Here’s a VIIRS image from 5 December 2015:

VIIRS True Color RGB composite of channels M-3, M-4 and M-5 (06:56 UTC 5 December 2015)

VIIRS True Color RGB composite of channels M-3, M-4 and M-5 (06:56 UTC 5 December 2015).

I assure you that India and Bangladesh are under there somewhere beneath all that gray muck!

As I mentioned in the previous post, we now have access to data from the new Japanese satellite, Himawari, which can be thought of as a geostationary version of VIIRS. Himawari-8 hangs out over the Equator at a longitude of 140 ยฐE and it takes images of the full disk every 10 minutes. From its perspective, India is right on the edge of the Earth (which, in satellite meteorology is called “the limb”). This means Himawari’s line-of-sight to India has an extra long path through the atmosphere, and that makes the smog look even worse. Here’s a True Color/Geocolor loop of Himawari images of India’s “Worse-than-China” Super-Smog. You can find this and other amazing loops on our new “Himawari Loop of the Day” webpage. We also produce a lot of other Himawari imagery products, which we post here.

Shameless plugs aside, don’t forget: India’s smog is actually worse than China’s. And, unless you live in India, you probably didn’t think that was possible! (If you do live in India, get them to clean up the air!)

(What’s the Story) Middle-of-the-Night Glory?

A Morning Glory is a lot of things: a flower, a town in Kentucky, a popular choice for song and album titles, and – what is most relevant for us – it’s a rare atmospheric phenomenon that is both beautiful and potentially deadly.

For glider pilots, it’s the atmospheric equivalent to catching a 40-wave off the North Shore of Oahu. Like surfing the North Shore, the thrill is in catching a powerful wave and going for a ride, which only happens if you position yourself in the right spot. And, just like surfing a monster wave, one misstep can result in being crushed downward into a pile of jagged rocks and swept out to sea. The difference is, a North Shore wave is 10-12 m high and only travels a 100 m or so until it hits land and stops. A Morning Glory wave is 500-1000 m high and can travel hundreds of kilometers over a period of several hours. Here’s a picture of one:

MorningGloryCloudBurketownFromPlane

“MorningGloryCloudBurketownFromPlane” by Mick Petroff – Mick Petroff. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MorningGloryCloudBurketownFromPlane.jpg#/media/File:MorningGloryCloudBurketownFromPlane.jpg

Simply put, a Morning Glory is a solitary wave, or “soliton“. We talked about mesospheric bores before, which are another kind of soliton. In this case, however, the soliton propagates through (or along the top of) the atmosphere’s boundary layer. Sometimes, it produces a cloud or series of clouds that came to be known as a “Morning Glory” because these clouds commonly occur near sunrise in the one place on Earth where this event isn’t rare.

Enough talk. The Day/Night Band (DNB) on VIIRS just saw a one. Let’s see if you can see it:

VIIRS DNB image of Australia (15:24 UTC 26 October 2015)

VIIRS DNB image of Australia (15:24 UTC 26 October 2015)

This really is like “Where’s Waldo?” because the image covers a much larger area than the Morning Glory. Even I didn’t see it at first. But, zoom in to the corner of the image over the Gulf of Carpentaria. (You can click on any of these images to see the full resolution version.) Now do you see it?

VIIRS DNB image of the Gulf of Carpentaria (15:24 UTC 26 October 2015)

VIIRS DNB image of the Gulf of Carpentaria (15:24 UTC 26 October 2015)

Once more on the zoom, and it’s obvious:

Same as above, but zoomed in on the Morning Glory.

Same as above, but zoomed in on the Morning Glory.

But, this happened at ~1:30 AM local time – depending on where in that image you are looking – so maybe it’s a Middle-of-the-Night Glory instead of a Morning Glory. (Fun fact: Northern Territory and South Australia are on a half-hour time zone, GMT+9:30. Queensland and the rest of eastern Australia are at GMT+10:00. But, the southern states have Daylight Saving Time while the north and west do not. That means almost every state has it’s own time zone.)

The Gulf of Carpentaria is where Morning Glory clouds are most likely to form. And, this is the peak season for them. (The season runs from late August to mid-November.) What is rare is seeing them so clearly at night.

Since this image was taken one night before a full moon, there was plenty of moonlight available to the DNB to see the “roll clouds” that are indicative of the Morning Glory. You can even see ripples that extend beyond the endpoints of the clouds, which might be some kind of aerosol plume affected by the waves.

There is another way to see this Morning Glory, and it’s what we call the “low cloud/fog product”. The low cloud/fog product is simply the difference in brightness temperature between the longwave infrared (IR) (10.7 ยตm) and the mid-wave IR (3.9 ยตm). For low clouds, this difference is positive at night and negative during the day. Here is an example of the low cloud/fog product applied to a new geostationary satellite, Himawari-8:

Animation of AHI Low Cloud/Fog product images (10:00 - 22:50 UTC 26 October 2015)

Animation of AHI Low Cloud/Fog product images (10:00 – 22:50 UTC 26 October 2015)

The Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) on Himawari-8 is similar to VIIRS, except it has water vapor channels in the IR and it doesn’t have the Day/Night Band. It also stays in the same place relative to the Earth and takes images of the “full disk” every 10 minutes. That’s what allows you to see – in impressive detail – the evolution of this Morning Glory. The low, liquid clouds switch from white to black after sunrise because, as I said, the signal switches from positive (white) to negative (black) at sunrise. Ice clouds (e.g. cirrus) always look black in this product.

Here’s a zoomed in version of the above animation:

As above, except zoomed in to highlight the Morning Glory

As above, except zoomed in to highlight the Morning Glory

Of course, once the sun rises, the standard visible imagery from AHI captures the tail end of the Morning Glory:

Animation of AHI Band 3 images (20:00 - 23:30 UTC 26 October 2015)

Animation of AHI Band 3 images (20:00 – 23:30 UTC 26 October 2015)

And, once again, zoomed in:

As above, except zoomed in to highlight the Morning Glory

As above, except zoomed in to highlight the Morning Glory

At this point, it really is a Morning Glory, since it appeared at sunrise. Of course, at night, only the VIIRS Day/Night Band under full moonlight can show it in “all of its glory”. (Pun definitely intended.)

Pilots take note: the waves can still exist even when the clouds evaporate, and they are a source of severe turbulence.

If you want to know more about the phenomenon, watch this video with a lot of information or this video with a lot of pretty pictures. And, while a lot of people believe the cause of the Morning Glory is still a mystery, one scientist in Germany thinks the cause is now known. You can read all about his and other’s research into the science behind these solitary waves at this webpage.

UPDATE (12/16/2016): We’ve seen more examples of Morning Glory waves and clouds with Himawari-8. The formation of two Morning Glory waves may be seen on our Himawari Loop-of-the-Day webpage here and here. Plus, there is an extended loop covering a two day period shown in this very large animated GIF (83 MB).