Tag Archives: M-12
December Fluff
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By now, you probably know the drill: a little bit of discussion about a particular subject, throw in a few pop culture references, maybe a video or two, then get to the good stuff – high quality VIIRS imagery. Then, maybe add some follow-up discussion to emphasize how VIIRS can be used to detect, monitor, or improve our understanding of the subject in question. Not today.
You see, VIIRS is constantly taking high quality images of the Earth (except during orbital maneuvers or rare glitches). There isn’t enough time in a day to show them all, or go into a detailed discussion as to their relevance. And, nobody likes to read that much anyway. So, as we busily prepare for the upcoming holidays, we’re going to skip the in-depth discussion and get right to the good stuff.
Here then is a sample of interesting images taken by VIIRS over the years that weren’t featured on their own dedicated blog posts. Keep in mind that they represent the variety of topics that VIIRS can shed some light on. Many of these images represent topics that have already been discussed in great detail in previous posts on this blog. Others haven’t. It is important to keep in mind… See, I’m starting to write too much, which I said I wasn’t going to do. I’ll shut up now.
Without further ado, here’s a VIIRS Natural Color image showing a lake-effect snow event that produced a significant amount of the fluffy, white stuff back in November 2014:
VIIRS Natural Color RGB composite of channels M-5, M-7 and M-10 (18:20 UTC 18 November 2014)
As always, click on the image to bring up the full resolution version. Did you notice all the cloud streets? How about the fact that the most vigorous cloud streets have a cyan color, indicating that they are topped with ice crystals? The whitish clouds are topped with liquid water and… Oops. I’m starting to discuss things in too much detail, which I wasn’t going to do today. Let’s move on.
Here’s another Natural Color RGB image using the high-resolution imagery bands showing a variety of cloud streets and wave clouds over the North Island of New Zealand:
VIIRS Natural Color RGB composite of channels I-1, I-2 and I-3 (02:55 UTC 3 September 2016)
Here’s a Natural Color RGB image showing a total solar eclipse over Scandinavia in 2015:
VIIRS Natural Color RGB composite of channels M-5, M-7 and M-10 (10:06 UTC 20 March 2015)
Here’s a VIIRS True Color image and split-window difference (M-15 – M-16) image showing volcanic ash from the eruption of the volcano Sangeang Api in Indonesia in May 2014:
VIIRS True Color RGB composite of channels M-3, M-4 and M-5 (06:20 UTC 31 May 2014)
VIIRS split-window difference (M-15 – M-16) image (06:20 UTC 31 May 2014)
Here’s a VIIRS True Color image showing algae and blowing dust over the northern end of the Caspian Sea (plus an almost-bone-dry Aral Sea):
VIIRS True Color RGB composite of channels M-3, M-4 and M-5 (09:00 UTC 18 May 2014)
Here is a high-resolution infrared (I-5) image showing a very strong temperature gradient in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Hokkaido (Japan):
VIIRS I-5 (11.45 um) image (03:45 UTC 12 December 2016)
The green-to-red transition just southeast of Hokkaido represents a sea surface temperature change of about 10 K (18 °F) over a distance of 3-5 pixels (1-2 km). This is in a location that the high-resolution Natural Color RGB shows to be ice- and cloud-free:
VIIRS Natural Color RGB composite of channels I-1, I-2 and I-3 (03:45 UTC 12 December 2016)
Here’s a high-resolution infrared (I-5) image showing hurricanes Madeline and Lester headed toward Hawaii from earlier this year:
VIIRS I-5 (11.45 um) image (22:55 UTC 30 August 2016)
Here are the Fire Temperature RGB (daytime) and Day/Night Band (nighttime) images of a massive collection of wildfires over central Siberia in September 2016:
VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB composite of channels M-10, M-11 and M-12 (05:20 UTC 18 September 2016)
VIIRS Day/Night Band image (19:11 UTC 18 September 2016)
Here is a 5-orbit composite of VIIRS Day/Night Band images showing the aurora borealis over Canada (August 2016):
Day/Night Band image composite of 5 consecutive VIIRS orbits (30 August 2016)
Here is a view of central Europe at night from the Day/Night Band:
VIIRS Day/Night Band image (01:20 UTC 21 September 2016)
And, finally, for no reason at all, here’s is a picture of Spain wearing a Santa hat (or sleeping cap) made out of clouds:
VIIRS Natural Color RGB composite of channels M-5, M-7 and M-10 (13:05 UTC 18 March 2014)
There you have it. A baker’s ten examples showing a small sample of what VIIRS can do. No doubt it will be taking more interesting images over the next two weeks, since it doesn’t stop working over the holidays – even if you and I do.
Germany’s Magic Sparkle
You may or may not have heard that a small town in Italy received 100 inches (250 cm; 2.5 m; 8⅓ feet; 8 x 10-17 parsecs) of snow in 18 hours just last week (5 March 2015). That’s a lot of snow! It’s more than what fell on İnebolu, Turkey back in the beginning of January. But, something else happened that week that is much more interesting.
All you skiers are asking, “What could be more interesting than 100 inches of fresh powder?” And all you weather-weenies are asking, “What could be more interesting than being buried under a monster snowstorm? I mean, that makes Buffalo look like the Atacama Desert!” The answer: well, you’ll have to read the rest of this post. Besides, VIIRS is incapable of measuring snow depth. (Visible and infrared wavelengths just don’t give you that kind of information.) So, looking at VIIRS imagery of that event isn’t that informative.
This is (or was, until I looked into it in more detail) another mystery. Not a spooky, middle-of-the-night mystery, but one out in broad daylight. (We can thus automatically rule out vampires.)
It started with a comparison between “True Color” and “Natural Color” images over Germany from 9 March 2015:
VIIRS True Color RGB composite of channels M-3, M-4 and M-5, taken 11:54 UTC 9 March 2015.
VIIRS Natural Color RGB composite of channels M-5, M-7 and M-10, taken 11:54 UTC 9 March 2015.
The point was to show, once again, how the Natural Color RGB composite can be used to differentiate snow from low clouds. That’s when I noticed it. Bright pixels (some white, some orange, some yellow, some peach-colored) in the Natural Color image, mostly over Bavaria. (Remember, you can click on the images, then click again, to see them in full resolution.) Thinking they might be fires, I plotted up our very own Fire Temperature RGB:
VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB composite of channels M-10, M-11 and M-12 from 11:54 UTC 9 March 2015.
I’ve gone ahead and drawn a white box around the area of interest. Let’s zoom in on that area for these (and future) images.
VIIRS True Color RGB (11:54 UTC 9 March 2015). Zoomed in and cropped to highlight the area of interest.
VIIRS Natural Color RGB (11:54 UTC 9 March 2015). Zoomed in and cropped to highlight the area of interest.
VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB (11:54 UTC 9 March 2015). Zoomed in and cropped to highlight the area of interest.
Now, these spots really show up. But, they’re not fires! Fires show up red, orange, yellow or white in the Fire Temperature composite (which is one of the benefits of it). They don’t appear pink or pastel blue. What the heck is going on?
Now, wait! Go back to the True Color image and look at it at full resolution. There are white spots right where the pastel pixels show up in the Fire Temperature image. (I didn’t notice initially, because white spots could be cloud, or snow, or sunglint.) This is another piece of evidence that suggests we’re not looking at fires.
For a fire to show up in True Color images, it would have to be about as hot as the surface of the sun and cover a significant portion of a 750-m pixel. Terrestrial fires don’t typically get that big or hot on the scale needed for VIIRS to see them at visible wavelengths. Now, fires don’t have to be that hot to show up in Natural Color images, but even then they appear red. Not white or peach-colored. If a fire was big enough and hot enough to show up in a True Color image, it would certainly show up in the high-resolution infrared (IR) channel (I-05, 11.45 µm), but it doesn’t:
VIIRS high-resolution IR (I-05) image (11:54 UTC 9 March 2015).
You might be fooled, however, if you looked at the mid-wave IR (I-04, 3.7 µm) where these do look like hot spots:
VIIRS high-resolution midwave-IR (I-04) image (11:54 UTC 9 March 2015).
What’s more amazing is I was able to see these bright spots all the way down to channel M-1 (0.412 µm), the shortest wavelength channel on VIIRS:
VIIRS “deep blue” visible (M-1) image (11:54 UTC 9 March 2015).
So, what do we know? Bright spots appear in all the bands where solar reflection contributes to the total radiance (except M-6 and M-9). I checked. (They don’t show up in M-6 [0.75 µm], because that channel is designed to saturate under any solar reflection so everything over land looks bright. They don’t show up in M-9 [1.38 µm] because solar radiation in that band is absorbed by water vapor and never makes it to the surface.) Hot spots do not coincide with these bright spots in the longer wavelength IR channels (above 4 µm).
What reflects a lot of radiation in the visible and near-IR but does not emit a lot in the longwave IR? Solar panels. That’s the answer to the mystery. VIIRS was able to see solar radiation reflecting off of a whole bunch of solar panels. That is the source of Germany’s “magic sparkle”.
Don’t believe me? First off, Germany is a world leader when it comes to producing electricity from solar panels. Solar farms (or “solar parks” auf Deutsch) are common – particularly in Bavaria, which produces the most solar power per capita of any German state.
Second: I was able to link specific solar parks with the bright spots in the above images using this website. (Not all of those solar parks show up in VIIRS, though. I’ll get to that.) And these solar parks can get quite big. Let’s take a look at a couple of average-sized solar parks on Google Maps: here and here. The brightest spot in the VIIRS Fire Temperature image (near 49° N, 11° E) matches up with this solar park, which is almost perfectly aligned with the VIIRS scans and perpendicular to the satellite track.
Third: it’s not just solar parks. A lot of people and businesses have solar panels on their roofs. Zoom in on Pfeffenhausen, and try to count the number of solar panels you see on buildings.
One more thing: if you think solar panels don’t reflect a lot of sunlight, you’re wrong. Solar power plants have been known reflect so much light they instantly incinerate birds*. (*This is not exactly true. See the update below.)
Another important detail is that all of the bright spots visible in the VIIRS images are a few degrees (in terms of satellite viewing angle) to the west of nadir. Given where the sun is in the sky this time of year (early March) and this time of day (noon) at this latitude (48° to 50° N), a lot of these solar panels are in the perfect position to reflect sunlight up to the satellite. But, not all of them. Some solar panels track the sun and move throughout the day. Other panels are fixed in place and don’t move. Only the solar panels in the right orientation relative to the satellite and the sun will be visible to VIIRS.
At these latitudes during the day, the sun is always to south and slightly to the west of the satellite. For the most part, solar panels to the east of the satellite will reflect light away from the satellite, which is why you don’t see any of those. If the panel is pointed too close to the horizon, or too close to zenith (or the sun is too high or too low in the sky), the sunlight will be reflected behind or ahead of the satellite and won’t be seen. You could say that this “sparkle” is actually another form of glint, like sun glint or moon glint – only this is “solar panel glint”.
Here’s a Natural Color image from the very next day (10 March 2015), when the satellite was a little bit further east and overhead a little bit earlier in the day:
VIIRS Natural Color RGB composite of channels M-5, M-7 and M-10 from 11:35 UTC 10 March 2015.
Notice the half-dozen-or-so bright spots over the Czech Republic. These are just west of the satellite track and in the same position relative to satellite and sun. (The bright spot near the borders of Austria and Slovakia matches up with this solar farm.) The bright spots over Germany are gone because they no longer line up with the sun and satellite geometry.
As for the pastel colors in the Natural Color and Fire Temperature RGBs, those are related to the proportional surface area of the solar panels relative to the size of each pixel as well as the background reflectivity of the ground surrounding the solar panels. The bright spots do generally appear more white in the high-resolution version of the Natural Color RGB from 9 March:
VIIRS high-resolution Natural Color (I-01, I-02, I-03) RGB image (11:54 UTC 9 March 2015).
See, we learned something today. Germany sparkles with green electricity and VIIRS can see it!
UPDATES (17 March 2015): Thanks to feedback from Renate B., who grew up in Bavaria and currently owns solar panels, we have this additional information: there is a push to add solar panels onto church roofs throughout Bavaria, since they tend to be the tallest buildings in town (not shaded by anything) and are typically positioned facing east, so the south-facing roof slopes are ideal for collecting sunlight. The hurdle is that churches are protected historical buildings that people don’t want to be damaged. Also, it’s not a coincidence that many solar parks have their solar panels facing southeast (and align with the VIIRS scan direction). They are more efficient at producing electricity in the morning, when the temperatures are lower, than they are in the afternoon when the panels are warmer. They face southeast to better capture the morning sun.
Also, to clarify (as pointed out by Ed S.): the solar power plant that incinerates birds generates electricity from a different mechanism than the photovoltaic (PV) arrays seen in these images from Germany. PV arrays (aka solar parks) convert direct sunlight to electricity. The “bird incinerator” uses a large array of mirrors to focus sunlight on a tower filled with water. The focused sunlight heats the water until it boils, generating steam that powers a turbine. Solar parks and solar panels on houses and churches do not cause birds to burst into flames.
Bárðarbunga, the Toxic Tourist Trap
Quick: what was the name of that Icelandic volcano that caused such a stir a few years ago? Oh, that’s right. You don’t remember. No one remembers. (Unless you live outside the U.S. in a place where you might have actually heard someone say the name correctly.) To Americans, it will forever be known as “That Icelandic Volcano” or “The Volcano That Nobody Can Pronounce” – even though it is possible to pronounce the name. Say it with me: Eye-a-Fiat-la-yo-could (Eyjafjallajökull).
Well, back at the end of August 2014 another volcano erupted in Iceland, and there is no excuse for not being able to pronounce this name correctly: Bárðarbunga. (OK, you have one excuse: use of the letter ð is uncommon outside of Iceland. In linguistics, ð is a “voiced dental fricative” which, in English, is a voiced “th”. “The” has a voiced “th”. “Theme” has an un-voiced “th” or, rather, “voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative“.) Look, you don’t want to offend any Icelanders, so say it right:
“Bowr-thar-Bunga.” See, it’s easy to say. (You may see people who are afraid of the letter ð refer to the recent eruption as Holuhraun [pronounced “Ho-lu-roin”], because Bárðarbunga is part of the Holuhraun lava field. So be aware of that.)
I know what you’re going to ask: “What is so special about this volcano? I haven’t heard anything about it up to this point, so why should I care?” You haven’t heard anything about it because you don’t live in Iceland or in Europe, which is downwind of Iceland. And, why should you care? Let me count the ways in the rest of this blog post.
You probably have heard of Kīlauea (and have no trouble pronouncing that name) and the lava flow that inched its way towards the town of Pahoa. Kīlauea has been continuously erupting since 1983. Bárðarbunga erupted on 29 August 2014 and has been spewing lava ever since, which at this point, is over 100 days of non-stop erupting. It’s Iceland’s version of Kīlauea. (Hopefully, it won’t continue to erupt for another 30 years.)
Just like Kīlauea, Bárðarbunga is attracting tourists from all over the world. It seems every wannabe photographer and videographer has gone (or wants to go) to Iceland to try to come up with the next viral video showing the breathtaking lava flows. Seriously, do a search for Bardarbunga or Holuhraun on YouTube or vimeo and see how many results show up. Here’s a pretty typical example (filmed by someone from Iceland):
Want to join in the fun? Just grab your camera, head to Iceland, hire an airplane or helicopter pilot, and find the most dramatic music you can think of to go along with your footage. Watch out, though – the airspace around the volcano can be rather crowded. As this video shows, it can be hard to film the volcano without other aircraft getting in the way.
If photography is more your thing, here are the latest images of the eruption on Twitter. (Look for the pictures of Beyonce and Jay-Z. If Twitter is correct, they flew over the volcano for his birthday. Viewing the eruption has gone mainstream! You’re too late, hipsters! Good luck getting to the next volcanic eruption before it becomes cool.)
Back to the matter at hand: why you should care about Bárðarbunga. After its first 100 days of erupting, it has created a field of new lava (76 km2) that is larger than the island of Manhattan (59 km2). The volcano has been creating a toxic plume of SO2 for the last 100 days that is making it difficult to breathe. (Here are some of the known health effects of breathing SO2.) SO2 can ultimately be converted into sulfuric acid (acid rain), depending on the chemistry in the air around the volcano. And while it may not be producing as much ash as Eyjafjallajökull did, VIIRS imagery shows it is producing ash, which is a threat to aircraft.
If you follow this blog, you know the best RGB composite for detecting ash is the True Color composite. This is because the visible wavelength channels that make the composite are sensitive to the scattering of light by small particles, like dust, smoke and ash. Iceland is a pretty cloudy place, so it’s not always easy to spot the ash plume, so here it is at its most visible:
VIIRS True Color RGB composite of channels M-3, M-4 and M-5, taken 12:57 UTC 11 September 2014. The red arrow points to the location of Bárðarbunga.
Click on the image (or any other image) to see the full resolution version. The red arrow shows the location of Bárðarbunga. In case you’re wondering, the borders drawn inside the island are IDL’s knowledge of the boundaries of lakes and glaciers (jökull in Icelandic). The big one just south of the red arrow is Vatnajökull – the largest glacier in Europe and one of three national parks in Iceland. (If you want to go there, be aware of closures due to volcanic activity.)
See the ash plume extending from the red arrow to the east-northeast out over the Atlantic Ocean? Now, try to find the ash plume in this animation of True Color images from 29 August to 14 October 2014:
Animation of VIIRS True Color images of Iceland 29 August – 14 October 2014
As with most of my animations, I have selectively removed images where it was too cloudy to see anything. Sometimes, the steam from the volcano mixes with the ash to make its own clouds, much like a pyrocumulus. Watch for the ash to get blown to the northwest and then southwest in early October. In case you can’t see it, here’s a static example:
VIIRS True Color RGB composite of channels M-3, M-4 and M-5, taken 12:15 UTC 10 October 2014. The red arrow shows the location of Reykjavik.
This time, the red arrow shows Reykjavik, the nation’s capitol and likely only city in Iceland you’ve heard of. The ash plume is pretty much right over Reykjavik!
Over the course of the first 100 days, no place in Iceland has been kept safe from the ash plume. But, that’s not the only threat from Bárðarbunga: I also mentioned SO2. If you recall from our look at Copahue (Co-pa-hway – say it right!) the EUMETSAT Dust algorithm is sensitive to SO2. So, can we detect the toxic sulfur dioxide plume from Bárðarbunga? Of course! But, it does depend on cloudiness and just how much (and how high) SO2 is being pumped into the atmosphere.
If you read my post on Copahue, you should have no trouble picking out the sulfur dioxide plume in this image of Bárðarbunga:
EUMETSAT Dust RGB composite applied to VIIRS, 12:57 UTC 11 September 2014
This image is from the same time as the first True Color image above, when the plume was very easy to see. Also note the large quantity of contrails (aka “chemtrails” to the easily misled). Those are the linear black streaks west of Iceland. If you’re confident in your ability to see the sulfur dioxide, see how often you can pick it out in this animation:
Animation of EUMETSAT Dust RGB images from VIIRS (29 August – 10 October 2014)
Some detail is lost because an RGB composite may contain as many as 16 million colors, while the .gif image standard only allows 256. But, you can still see the pastel-colored SO2 plume, which almost looks greenish under certain conditions due to interactions with clouds. Also note the volcano itself appears cyan – the hottest part of the image has a cool color! Unusual in a composite that makes almost everything appear red or pink.
If you want to see the volcano look more like a hot spot, here are animations of the shortwave IR (M-13, 4.0 µm) and the Fire Temperature RGB composite (which I promote whenever I can). I should preface these animations by saying I have not removed excessively cloudy images but, at least 80% of the days have two VIIRS afternoon overpasses and, to reduce filesizes, I have kept only one image per day:
Animation of VIIRS M-13 images of Iceland (29 August – 15 October 2014)
The Fire Temperature RGB is made up of M-10 (1.6 µm; blue), M-11 (2.25 µm; green) and M-12 (3.7 µm; red):
Animation of VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB images of Iceland (29 August – 15 October 2014)
No surprise, molten rock is quite hot! That area of lava has saturated my color table for M-13 and it saturated the Fire Temperature RGB. As I’ve said before, only the hottest fires show up white in the Fire Temperature RGB and lava is among the hottest things you’ll see with VIIRS. Sometimes, you can see the heat from the volcano through clouds (and certainly through the ash plume)! It’s also neat to watch the river of lava extend out to the northeast and then cool.
To quantify it a bit more, the first day VIIRS was able to see the hot spot of Bárðarbunga (31 August 2014), the M-13 brightness temperature was the highest I’ve seen yet: 631.99 K. The other midwave-IR channels (M-12 and I-4; 3.7 and 3.74 µm, respectively) saturate at 368 K. The Little Bear Fire (2012) peaked at 588 K and that fire was hot enough to show up in M-10 (1.6 µm) during the day, so it’s no wonder that we’ve saturated the Fire Temperature RGB.
There’s one more interesting way to look at Bárðarbunga using a new RGB composite. When I was first tipped to this event, I saw this image from NASA, which you can read more about here. That image was taken by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) from Landsat-8 and is a combination of “green, near-infrared and shortwave infrared” channels. Applying this to VIIRS, that combination becomes M-4 (0.55 µm), M-7 (0.87 µm) and M-11 (2.25 µm), which is similar to the Natural Color composite (M-5, 0.64 µm; M-7, 0.87 µm; M-10, 1.61 µm) except for a few notable differences. M-4 is more sensitive to smoke and ash and vegetation than M-5. And M-11 is more sensitive to fires and other hotspots than M-10.
The differences are subtle, but you can see them in this direct comparison:
Comparison between VIIRS “Natural Color” and “False Color with Shortwave IR” RGB composites (12:38 UTC 14 October 2014)
NASA calls this RGB composite “False Color with Shortwave Infrared,” although I’m sure there has to be a better name. Any suggestions?
Most of my images and loops have come from the first 45 days after eruption. This was a very active period for the volcano, and is where most of the previously mentioned videos came from. (And trust me, you and your browser couldn’t handle the massive animations that would have resulted from using all 100+ days of images.) To prove Bárðarbunga has gone on beyond that, here’s one of the new RGB composites from 17 November 2014:
VIIRS false color RGB composite of channels M-4, M-7 and M-11, taken 13:42 UTC 17 November 2014
This image really makes Iceland look like a land of fire and ice, which is exactly what it is!
Investigating Mysteries of the Deep, Dark Night
Conspiracy theorists will tell you that conspiracies exist everywhere; that they’re part of daily life; and that most people are ignorant of all the attempts by various governments around the world to covertly control every facet of your life. Only they know the truth. But, that’s just what they want you to believe! Conspiracy theorists are simply manipulating you in order to control you and create a New World Order! Wake up!
Full disclosure: I am subsidized by the U.S. government to inform people of the capabilities and uses of the satellite instrument called VIIRS and today I’ll show you how that satellite instrument can help separate fact from fiction when it comes to the latest conspiracy theory. (Of course, working for the government means I could be part of the conspiracy! Mwa ha ha!)
During the last week of August 2014, I was sent this link to a story from a pilot/photographer who captured “the creepiest thing so far” in his long flying career. I’ll quote his initial post again in its entirety here (for those of you too lazy to click on the links):
Last night [24 August 2014] over the Pacific Ocean, somewhere South of the Russian peninsula Kamchatka I experienced the creepiest thing so far in my flying career. After about 5 hours in flight we left Japan long time behind us and were cruising at a comfortable 34.000ft with about 4,5 hours to go towards Alaska.
We heard via the radio about earthquakes in Iceland, Chile and San Francisco, and since there were a few volcanos on our route that might or might not be going off during our flight, we double checked with dispatch if there was any new activity on our route after we departed from Hongkong.Then, very far in the distance ahead of us, just over the horizon an intense lightflash shot up from the ground. It looked like a lightning bolt, but way more intense and directed vertically up in the air. I have never seen anything like this, and there were no flashes before or after this single explosion of light.
Since there were no thunderstorms on our route or weather-radar, we kept a close lookout for possible storms that might be hiding from our radar and might cause some problems later on.
I decided to try and take some pictures of the night sky and the strange green glow that was all over the Northern Hemisphere. I think it was sort of a Northern Lights but it was much more dispersed, never seen anything like this before either. About 20 minutes later in flight I noticed a deep red/orange glow appearing ahead of us, and this was a bit strange since there was supposed to be nothing but endless ocean below us for hundreds of miles around us. A distant city or group of typical Asian squid-fishing-boats would not make sense in this area, apart from the fact that the lights we saw were much larger in size and glowed red/orange, instead of the normal yellow and white that cities or ships would produce.
The closer we got, the more intense the glow became, illuminating the clouds and sky below us in a scary orange glow. In a part of the world where there was supposed to be nothing but water.
The only cause of this red glow that we could think of, was the explosion of a huge volcano just underneath the surface of the ocean, about 30 minutes before we overflew that exact position.
Since the nearest possible airport was at least 2 hours flying away, and the idea of flying into a highly dangerous and invisible ash-plume in the middle of the night over the vast Pacific Ocean we felt not exactly happy. Fortunately we did not encounter anything like this, but together with the very creepy unexplainable deep red/orange glow from the ocean’s surface, we felt everything but comfortable. There was also no other traffic near our position or on the same routing to confirm anything of what we saw or confirm any type of ash clouds encountered.
We reported our observations to Air Traffic Control and an investigation into what happened in this remote region of the ocean is now started.
If you go back and click on the link, you’ll see he posted several pictures of the mysterious red lights along with more detailed information about where and when this occurred. To save you some time, here is a representative picture (taken at 11:21 UTC 24 August 2014). And here is the location of the aircraft when they saw the lights.
There are three parts to this story: 1) the bright flash of light that looked like lightning coming up from the surface; 2) the aurora-like features in the sky; and 3) the red and orange lights from the clouds below that appeared to be larger than ordinary ship lights.
Since the story was first posted, people from all over commented on what they thought the lights were and the pilot has been updating his webpage to cover the most common and/or most likely explanations. The media picked up the story and used it to claim the world was coming to an end. Existing theories range from UFOs (unidentified flying objects) and UUSOs (unidentified under-surface objects) operated by space aliens to covert military operations to spontaneously-combusting methane bubbling out of the ocean to “earthquake lights“. The pilot himself initially thought it was an underwater volcanic eruption.
So, can VIIRS shed light on what was going on? Yes – at least, on #2 and #3. VIIRS passed over the area in question at 15:35 UTC on 24 August, which is about 4 hours after the pilot took his pictures. This means VIIRS can’t say anything about the lightning-like flash that was observed. So #1 is unexplained.
As for #2 – the aurora-like features in the sky – those are simply airglow waves. We’ve discussed airglow and airglow waves before here and here.
Now, onto #3 where VIIRS is most informative: the mysterious surface lights. I mentioned the VIIRS overpass at 15:35 UTC on 24 August. Here’s what the Day/Night Band (DNB) saw:
VIIRS Day/Night Band image from 15:35 UTC 24 August 2014.
Look at 47.5°N latitude and 159°E longitude. (You can click on the image, then on the “4329 x 2342” link below the banner to see the full resolution image.) Those are the lights the pilot saw! (Note also that this night was near new moon, so any illumination of the clouds in that area comes from airglow. Light in the northeast corner of the image is twilight from the approaching sunrise.)
Now, VIIRS also has bands in the short-, mid- and long-wave infrared (IR). Surely, they must have seen the heat signature put out by a volcanic eruption, right? Not necessarily. The pilot’s photographs clearly show the lights shining through a layer of clouds, and it doesn’t take much cloud cover to obscure heat signatures at these wavelengths. But, for completeness, here are the observed brightness temperatures at 3.7 µm (channel M-12) and 10.7 µm (channel M-15):
VIIRS M-12 image from 15:35 UTC 24 August 2014
VIIRS M-15 image from 15:35 UTC 24 August 2014
I don’t see any hotspots in either of those images near the location of the lights. But, as I said, this doesn’t disprove the presence of flaming methane or volcanic activity because of possible obscuration by clouds. (Note that the clouds are easier to see in the DNB image than either of the IR images because there is no thermal contrast between the clouds and the open ocean for the IR images to take advantage of. There is, however, reflection of airglow light available to provide contrast in the DNB.)
What about the night before? The night after? Were the lights still there?
Here’s the DNB image from 15:54 UTC 23 August 2014 (aka the night before):
VIIRS DNB image from 15:54 UTC 23 August 2014
The light is there in pretty much the same place, although it looks like one big circle instead of a number of smaller lights. What is going on? Once again, it’s clouds. This time, the longwave IR shows we have optically thicker and/or an additional layer of high clouds over the lights:
VIIRS M-15 image from 15:54 UTC 23 August 2014
Optically thicker clouds scatter and diffuse the light more, and what you are seeing in the DNB image is the area of clouds surrounding the light source that scatter the light to the satellite. See how clouds scatter the city lights of the U.S. Midwest in this comparison between the DNB and M-15 from 07:42 UTC 2 September 2014:
(You may have to refresh the page if this before/after image trick doesn’t work.)
It’s not that Chicago, Illinois and Gary, Indiana extend that far out into Lake Michigan or that the map is not plotting correctly. It’s that the optically thicker clouds over the southern end of the lake scatter more of the light back to the satellite (and over a larger area than the lights themselves), making it appear that the light is coming from over the lake.
Similarly, scattering in the clouds makes the individual “mystery lights” over the Pacific Ocean appear to be one large area of light, instead of a number of smaller lights.
How do the lights look on 25 August 2014 (aka the night after)? Here’s the DNB image:
VIIRS DNB image from 15:18 UTC 25 August 2014
Did you notice that? The lights aren’t in the same place as before. They moved. In fact, I tracked these lights in the DNB for two weeks. And I got this result:
Do volcanoes move around from day to day? I think we can safely say the pilot was not observing a volcanic eruption.
Now, I don’t know much about spontaneously combusting methane bubbles in the ocean, but I doubt they are this frequent. The pilot found another pilot’s report of methane burning over the ocean from 9 April 1984 (which also occurred during a flight from Japan to Alaska) but, that was during the day and it was the resulting cloud that was spotted, not the actual flames. There is no evidence of clouds being produced by these lights over this two week period. There also isn’t much evidence from seismic activity over this period to justify earthquake lights.
Another theory put forth was meteorites but, again, it seems highly improbable that VIIRS would be capturing this many meteorites hitting this localized area of the Pacific Ocean every night for two weeks. Plus, they would have to be pretty large meteors to appear as large as these lights.
Unless you believe in UFOs (or UUSOs), that leaves only one question: why were the pilots of this flight so quick to dismiss ships? The DNB has seen ships on the ocean before, and they look a lot like this. (You can find examples of individual boats observed by the DNB here and an example of larger squid boat operations here.)
It is true that most squid boats use white or greenish light and the pictures clearly show red and orange lights coming up through the clouds. But military ships are known to use red lights at night, at least, according to Yahoo! Answers.
If it looks like a fleet of ships and moves like a fleet of ships, I’m guessing it’s a fleet of ships. Unless, of course, it’s a gam of sharks with freakin’ laser beams attached to their heads.