Group for Earth Observation

The Independent Amateur Quarterly Publication for
Earth Observation and Weather Satellite Enthusiasts

49
March/April 2016
Inside this issue . .
This issue coincides with thefirst imagery received from
ESA’s newest Copernicus
satellite, Sentinel 3A. You canview some of these striking
images inside, and readabout the capabilities of thisexciting new satellite.
There are two articles relating
to hole-punch clouds in thisissue: one, a particularly
colourful example from
Australia and the other aview from satellite, overMississippi and Louisiana.
John Tellick writes about
ESA’s Proba-1 satellite, whichis still providing remarkable
images 15 years after gaining
orbit.
A year on from the
EUMETCast changeover to
DVB-S2, John Barfoot sharessome tips that could improve
members’ experiences.
On the Russian satellite
scene, Les Hamilton brings
you up to date with the latest
news, in particular thetransfer of LRPTtransmissions to the older
Meteor M1 satellite.
And there is a host of articles
from NASA’s Earth
Observatory website dealing
with such varied topics as El
Nino, Hofsjokull Ice Cap, theNorthwest Passage and cloudstreets over the Great Lakes.

GEO MANAGEMENT TEAMLes Hamilton

Director and Public Relations
Francis Bell,
Coturnix House, Rake Lane,
Milford, Godalming, Surrey GU8 5AB,
England.
Tel:
01483 416 897
email: francis@geo-web.org.uk
General Information
John Tellick,email: information@geo-web.org.uk
GEO Quarterly Editor
Les Hamilton,
8 Deeside Place,
Aberdeen AB15 7PW, Scotland UK.
email: geoeditor@geo-web.org.uk
GEO Quarterly Despatch
Peter Green
Membership and Subscriptions
David Anderson,
35 Sycamore Road,
East Leake, Loughborough LE12 6PP,
England, UK.
email: members@geo-web.org.uk
Tel:01509 820 067
Technical Consultant (Hardware)David Simmons
email: tech@geo-web.org.uk
Webmaster and Website Matters
Alan Banks,e-mail: webmaster@geo-web.org.uk
GEO Shop Manager
Nigel Evans (Assistant: David Simmons),
email: shop@geo-web.org.uk
International Liaison
Rob Denton,
email: liaison@geo-web.org.uk
Management Committee Members
Clive Finnis
Carol Finnis

Publisher
Published by The Group for Earth
Observation Limited, a company in Englandand Wales, limited by guarantee and nothaving share capital.
The Company Number is 4975597.
The registered office is Coturnix House,
Rake Lane, Milford, Godalming,
Surrey GU8 5AB, England.
Printing (December Issue)
Hedgerow Print,
16 Marsh Lane,
Crediton, Devon EX17 1ES.
Tel: 01363 777 595
Responsibility
Every effort is made to ensure that thetechnical and constructional articles
published in this Quarterly are correct.
However, the ultimate responsibility iswith the reader to ensure the safety of
constructions and for any interfacing withother equipment. GEO cannot accept liability
for shortcomings in any published design or
any constructions carried out by members orother third parties.
Copyright GEO © 2016
The contents of this Quarterly remain theintellectual property of the Group for Earth
Observation Limited and its contributors.
Copying of text or images, either from theprinted Quarterly or from any electronicallystored source, is forbidden without
permission from the Editor.

geoeditor@geo-web.org.uk

As you will no doubt have realised by now, this Quarterly has arrived
rather later than normal, hence its ‘March/April’ branding. By Copy
Deadline I had received only a handful of contributions from readers,and must thank Francis Bell and John Tellick in particular for sourcing
material for me well past the ‘last minute’ for acceptance.

E

ven so, a full Quarterly has only become possible through myextensive raids on NASA websites for material, as you canappreciate from the ‘Contents’ table below. Over the years I have used
this option to fill the odd blank page: in this issue, it is the predominant
contributor.

On a more cheerful note, following a suggestion from a member,
GEO is prepared to celebrate the 50th issue of the Quarterly
by providing every reader with an extra printed paper copy at no extra
cost. Of course, we must have content worthy of such a move, and thisis where you come in. We require articles worthy of this issue from ourmembers, by the copy deadline below. You can read more about thison page 8.

Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy our first issue of 2016. It has taken agreat deal of hard work to put this together.

C

opy deadline for the June issue of GEO
Quarterly is Sunday, May 29, 2016.

Contents
GEO Report and Quarterly Question
Meteor News: LRPT Data switches to Meteor M1
From the Editor’s Keyboard
Quarterly Question
Cover Image Details
Gains at Hofsjokull Ice Cap
Partial Opening of the Northwest Passage
EUMETCast Changeover: Postscript to a problem
Amazing Fallstreak Hole over Victoria
Islands in Red
Solar Outage Monitoring
Southeast England’s Brief Winter
El Nino should now be near its peak
ESA’s Proba-1 Images Uluru
Cloud Streets over the Great Lakes
Blizzard by Moonlight
Beginners’ Checklist
Feedback
Hole-Punch Clouds over Mississippi and Louisiana
EUMETCast Reception with the TBS-6903 Tuner
Waves above and Below the Water
Sentinel 3A’s First Images
Cloud Streets
Iceberg B-09B on the Move Again
Hurricanes Develop Early in 2016
Nansen Ice Shelf Splitting from Antarctica
Satellite Status
GEO Helplines and Internet Discussion Groups
GEO Membership Application FormGEO Shop Catalogue and Price List

Francis BellLes Hamilton
Les Hamilton
Francis Bell
NASA Earth Observatory
NASA Earth Observatory
John BarfootLes Hamilton
ESA
David Taylor
John Tellick
NASA Earth Observatory
John Tellick
NASA Earth Observatory
NASA Earth Observatory
Francis Bell
NASA Earth Observatory
Mike Stevens
NASA Earth Observatory
ESAJohn Tellick
NASA Earth Observatory
NASA Earth Observatory
NASA Earth Observatory

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GEO Quarterly No 49

The Group for Earth Observation

March/April 2016

Francis BellThe past two months have kept me very busy both with my GEO
activities and my amateur radio interests. The text below is areminder about our Symposium meeting, to be held on Saturday
April 23, 2016, at the National Space Centre, Leicester. It has taken
me a long time to negotiate with the institutions for whom the
speakers work but the effort is currently looking very worthwhile
because of the qualities and experience of those who havealready agreed to attend. All are experienced and will bring us
up-to-date with the latest satellite developments.

their recording session in Guildford, the BBC team travelled on
to a Bristol school where a scheduled contact was due with Tim
Peake on the ISS. This turned out to be successful.

During the time I was engaged with the symposium planning,
I was contacted by the BBC who wanted to celebrate the 25th
anniversary of Helen Sharman’s time on the MIR space station.
Helen Sharman was the first British astronaut. I guess the BBC’sinterest in her ﬂight was precipitated by the fact that Tim Peake is
now on the ISS, and over the next few weeks there are plans tohave radio contacts between him and a number of UK schools.

My interest with the ISS continues, and I regularly record images
from the experimental HDTV cameras carried on it.

In fact, 25 years ago, I was the very first amateur to speak with
Helen Sharman on MIR, and this was followed the next day withmy school’s radio group holding a planned question and answer
session with Helen. With my cooperation and contacts, theBBC went to a lot of trouble to reconstruct our Royal Grammar
School’s contact with MIR, making their recordings close to
the original radio room in the school, together with the original
radio equipment. The BBC recordings also included two of theoriginal ’boys’ involved with the contact, now about 40 years old,plus Helen Sharman herself, but this time located somewhere
in London and not a few hundred of miles out in space. After2

The recordings eventually formed part of the BBC 1 programmethe ‘One Show’ which was shown on February 26, 2016. The
effort on the part of the BBC and others to make this recording
was considerable, all for less than a five minute on air:nevertheless it was a fun experience!

Reminder of GEO’s Symposium Meeting 2016
I hope most of our GEO members will have already noted thedate and location of our symposium, which is Saturday April 23,
2016, at the National Space Centre, Leicester. A full page noticeabout this event did appear on page 10 of our previous issue,
GEO Quarterly No 48, in December 2015. Since that date there
have been confirmations from a number of invited speakers
although others remain outstanding.
My personal ambition for this meeting has related to gaining
information abut the additional Earth observation data streams
we can expect to receive from EUMETSAT and other sourcesin the near future. A few years ago, the European Commission
provided the initiative for the Copernicus project which promptly
evolved into the planning of a series of Earth observation
satellites monitoring the land, oceans and atmosphere.

Francis Bell speaking live to Helen Sharman as part of the BBC’s reconstruction of the radio contact with Helen on the MIR spacestation 25 years ago. From left to right: Francis Bell, Angellica Bell (BBC presenter) and Old Boys Peter Hibbs and Les Starkie.

www.geo-web.org.uk

March/April 2016

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 49

This is an image from an ISS HDTV camera looking almost south. The image shows a slightly oblique view of the southern tip of Africa with Namibia
in the lower foreground and the Cape of Good Hope centre right. Live images from these experimental cameras are available most of the time, justvisit the web site referred to in the Beginners’ Checklist on page 29.

This ‘Sentinel’ series of satellites was judged more
appropriate than one or two giant satellites similar to therecently decommissioned EnviSat.
Several of these Sentinel satellites have already beenlaunched and are providing stunning images. The greatbonus for users is the underlying philosophy of the
programme: that the data is to be made freely available
to end users.Some images are already available from
ESA but my understanding is that future dissemination
is to be split between ESA and EUMETSAT. It is thisprogramme of data dissemination, together with othertopics, which I hope can be a core focus during our
Symposium. I know EUMETSAT are testing their new
High Volume Service (HVS) but further advice about its
reception would be most welcome at our meeting.
The confirmed speakers for the day are as follows:• Dr Hartmut Bosch, Head of Earth Observation
Science Group, University of Leicester• Nicholas Coyne Dissemination Engineer,
EUMETSAT• Thomas Ormston Scientist ESOC ( This may be avideo contact rather than attending in person )• Outstanding invitations are still with NOAA and
Surrey Space Centre.
It already looks as though we will enjoy a busy andworthwhile day of activities, but I would continue towelcome contributions from our members, relating tosharing their own personal skills and experiences fromwhich we can all benefit. Please volunteer if you cancontribute to the day’s programme: a presentation or
display would be equally appreciated.
Please contact me directly, by email, if anything needs
planning in advancefrancis@francisbell.com
We will hold a members’ AGM towards the end of theday.

Registration
You can just turn up on the day, even with non-member
guests, but it helps the administration process if you canregister in advance. Just email your details to
Costliaison@geo-web.org.uk.

We try to keep costs to a minimum but do have to pay forthe hire of the venue: hence there will be a charge of £15
per person. The bonus here is that this includes free car
parking and free entry into the NSC exhibition areas.
Location
Just to remind you the NSC is located 1.5 miles north ofLeicester city centre with its rail and bus services. By car
the approach to the NSC is well signposted.
Accommodation
If you are staying overnight in Leicester there are many
modestly priced hotels. A hotel many GEO members
have used in the past is the

Ibis Hotel,
St George’s Way,
Constitution Hill,
Leicester LE1 1PL
Tel: (+44) (0)1162487200
You can also contact them via the Internet:
Google ‘IBIS LEICESTER CITY HOTEL’.
Timings
Registration will be from 9.00 am, and we have to clear
the premises by 5.00 pm. Lunch and coffee breaks
during the day will be included in the program.
I look forward to seeing many of you on April 23, 2016.
Please remember to promote this meeting with yourfriends because non GEO members are welcome toattend as well. And a final reminder that free parking andfree access to the NSC Exhibition areas are included in
the cost of entry.

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GEO Quarterly No 49

The Group for Earth Observation

March/April 2016

Les Hamilton
Last issue we revealed that Russia’s Meteor M1 satellite,
which had been silent for thirteen months, had beenreactivated on November 6, 2015 and, for a while, we had
two Meteor satellites transmitting LRPT imagery. But inthe months since, Meteor M2 has ceased transmitting
LRPT, while Meteor M1,which has negotiated a number ofproblems. now disseminates the LRPT data.
Meteor M1 (2015)
On reactivation, Meteor M1 was initially transmitting
channels 1, 2 and 3, but the two former were operating
well below strength. This meant that colour composite
images could not be produced and only the greyscale
imagery from channel-3 was significant [1]. On theascending evening pass of November 12, the transmission
format was changed to channels 3, 4 and 5, affording an
excellent channel-5 infrared image of a storm heading
northwards over the North Sea (figure 1). Ireland is clearlyvisible, left-centre at the foot of the image; Iceland can beseen at upper left.

Figure 2
The final Meteor M1 channel-5 infrared image,acquired at 18:14 UT on November 30, 2015

Meteor M1’s output immediately changed back tochannels 1, 2 and 3, now all transmitting at full strength.
Figure 3 shows a colour composite image created from themorning pass on December 4. The image is bright to theeast and dark to the west because the satellite was flying
close to the terminator between night and day.

Figure 1
A Meteor M1 channel-5 infrared image acquired
at 19:36 UT on November 12, 2015

What was quickly apparent in all Meteor M1 images was
the fact that no image could be decoded until the satellite
was high in the sky, generally between 50° and 60°
elevation from my location in northeast Scotland. This has
been widely attributed to an antenna pointing problem:
it is speculated that it had failed to deploy fully, and thatsignals from it were being partially shielded by the body ofthe satellite itself.
Alas, this transmitting format proved short lived because
the infrared sensors failed on December 1. The final
channel-5 image I obtained appears in figure 2.

4

www.geo-web.org.uk

Figure 3
This Meteor M1 RGB123 composite image was
acquired at 08:41 UT on December 4, 2015

March/April 2016

The Group for Earth Observation

Continuing Problems
But all was not well with Meteor M1, which was known tohave had pointing problems at the time it was switched
off in favour of Meteor M2 in 2014. Indeed, officials
reported at that time that the failure of the attitude control
system had rendered the satellite inoperable. But clearly,
Meteor M1 has been brought back into a usable state,even though some recent images have been obtained
which clearly give an oblique view of the countries below,
and which include a section of Earth’s limb (figure 4).

GEO Quarterly No 49

to supply Meteor M1 with all the power it requires
throughout its traverse of Earth’s dark side.
Meteor M2
It proved a big surprise when LRPT signals from
Meteor M2 suddenly ceased after December 10, 2015 (andhave not been restored three months later). It was a giventhat the footprints of the two Meteors were due to overlap
for a spell during January 2016, and it was anticipatedthat Meteor M1 would be switched off at that time.
It eventually transpired that the LRPT suite aboard
Meteor M2 was interfering with the operation of otherpackages carried by the satellite (just as happened in thecase of ESA’s Metop satellites). Meteor M2 continues toprovide HRPT data streams, but it seems probable thatits LRPT stream will not now be reactivated. The final
Meteor M2 image I received is shown in figure 6.

Figure 4This skewed image from December 21, 2015, shows Meteor M1
pointing towards the eastern horizon.

Another ongoing problem, which reared its head mostnoticeably during the shortest days of the year, was an
inability to produce coherent images until Meteor M1
had descended well into the illuminated hemisphere.
An example is shown in figure 5. I don’t recall anyone
venturing an explanation, but as the effect always
disappeared as the overall illumination increased, it
may well be that the craft’s ageing batteries are unable
Figure 6
This is the final Meteor M2 image received in northeast Scotland, fromthe 11:12 UT pass on December 10, 2015.

Meteor M1 (2016)
Although signals from Meteor M1 continued to be strong
during the early weeks of 2016, images received from
northern hemisphere locations remained quite poor andunevenly illuminated due to the low angle of the sun.
But a possible foretaste of what was to come came from
Norberto Filipe, who posts on the GEO-Subscribers YAHOOGroup. Norberto lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and oneof his superb summer time RGB123 images of southern
South America, which dates from December last year,
appears on the following page.

Figure 5This image from December 19 shows Meteor M1 struggling to transmit
its imagery. There is also a degree of skew towards the horizon.

As February approached, Meteor M1 appeared to besettling down. With improved solar illumination, ‘stripy’
images like figure 5 became a thing of the past, andskewed perspectives as illustrated in figure 4 became
noticeably less frequent. From my location, early morning
images started to show good detail towards the southern
extremities of the passes, particularly of the snow-covered
Alps, Italy and Greece. Figure 8 is a typical example,
acquired from the final few minutes of the 07:15 UT
Meteor M1 pass on January 24.

www.geo-web.org.uk

5

6

Figure 7
Norberto Philipe, a contributor to the GEO-Subscribers Yahoo Group, lives in Buenos Aires, so was ideallylocated to receive summertime images from Meteor M1 during December 2015. This RGB123 image, dating from
December 11, provides a stunning image
covering Uruguay, along with much of Argentina and Chile.
www.geo-web.org.uk

March/April 2016

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 49

Figure 8
Improving illumination in late January 2015 resulted in excellent detailover the Alps, Italy and Greece.

Another Problem
On February 13, I received an email from Enrico Gobbetti
alerting me to a change in the waveform of the Meteor M1
transmission (figure 9).
The principal peak centred on 137.0968 MHz was much
lower than normal, and was flanked by a number ofsmaller satellite peaks.

Figure 9This screenshot illustrates the change in the Meteor M1 waveform thatwas first apparent on February 13, 2016.

Despite this, Enrico, who uses a sophisticated receiverand tracking antenna, was still able to decode images
as normal. However, for everyone relying on RTL‑SDR
dongles, imaging became much more difficult. In mysituation, the LRPT stream only started to decode when
the satellite was almost overhead on a high elevationpass, and produced images much shorter in scope thanpreviously. Satellite passes an orbit farther east or west
refused to decode into images at all.

to me to be even better than previously. Indeed, for the
first time ever, I received a Meteor M1 image showing thewhole of Spain: previously my images rarely stretchedmuch farther south than the Pyrenees.

No explanation has been forthcoming as to what exactly
was happening to the satellite transmissions, but assuddenly as it had started, the unusual behaviour
stopped. On February 19, Meteor M1 was againtransmitting its familiar single peak and imaging seemed

Perhaps the additional peaks in the display were due
to telemetry between the ground station and Meteor as
technicians updated the systems aboard the craft. At any
rate, at the time of reporting (early March), Meteor M1 isproducing excellent images from northern hemispherelocations, with the promise of even better to come assummer beckons (figure 10).
References
1 GEO Quarterly 28, page 9 (December 2015)

Figure 10
This RGB123 segment from the 08:11 UT pass on February 28 illustrates the improved performance of Meteor M1 following its
signal anomalies earlier in the month. The regions highlighted in cyan are the snow-covered mountains of Norway and Scotland.

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GEO Quarterly No 49

The Group for Earth Observation

March/April 2016

Les Hamilton
The next issue of GEO Quarterly is destined to be our 50th since
the organisation was founded in late 2003. But there are now
serious questions to be addressed if the Quarterly is to continue
much longer.
Evolution of the Editor’s Rôle
Having previously served for four years as both Copy Editor and
Make-up Editor for the Journal of the Remote Imaging Group,
I was invited to fill a similar rôle for the new organisation. With
cutting-edge developments aplenty at this time, particularly
relating to the MSG2 satellites and their novel image
dissemination via DVB, there was material aplenty to fill themagazines for some considerable time.
As editor, I enjoyed receiving a regular ﬂow of articles frommembers throughout the three-month gestation period of each
GEO Quarterly magazine. Personally, this was a great time,as I was always one of the first to learn about interesting new
developments in the field of weather satellite imaging. In thosedays, I tended to spend a quarter to half an hour almost every
day preparing copy for the Quarterly and consulting with theauthors on the layout and presentation of their material. There
was no rush; the pace was leisurely, and very enjoyable.
But much has changed since then. As the Internet broadened
its reach, and higher transmission speeds evolved, much of
the information sought by GEO members became available
almost immediately from the Web. Certainly, in the last two years
particularly, members’ submissions have dried to a trickle: for thisissue, by the copy deadline, I had received only three one-page
articles: from John Barfoot and John Tellick (2), which is theprincipal reason for the lateness of this issue. I now find myself
only rarely firing up the GEO Computer, apart from a period ofabsolute frenzy after the copy deadline has expired.
Far from those heady, leisurely days, when making up GEO
Quarterly was a breeze, I now regularly find myself ‘painted into a
corner’ as it were at copy deadline, and having to work my socks
off for two to three weeks to produce each magazine. Yearsago, I was happy to fill the odd ‘blank’ page with short, illustrated
stories from the NASA Earth Observatory website. A glanceat the Contents listing on page 1 of this issue reveals that the
majority of articles now come from this source. These articles, inaddition to those I choose to research and compile myself meanthat these days I am having, single-handedly, to produce threequarters—if not more—of GEO Quarterly.
Decision
Now in my seventies (how time ﬂies), I informed the Management
Team at the end of last year that I was not prepared to placemyself in this pressure situation any longer. I explained that it
was up to them and the members in the field, either themselves,or by identifying willing authors amongst their personal contacts,
to furnish me with suitable articles during the 3-month run-in toeach issue of GEO Quarterly.
I am perfectly willing and able to do the tasks I was earmarked
to do when GEO was formed—editing and making-up otherpeoples’ submissions. But henceforth, I will no longer be
spending many hours of my time searching the Internet for
inspiration: it’s up to you!

8

GEO Quarterly 50
Some time ago, one of GEO’s members sent me an email with asuggestion for a major article, which he promised to have readyfor GEO Quarterly No 50. He also suggested that it would be anice touch if this particular issue could also be made available toall members as a printed, paper magazine. I put this suggestion
to the Management Team during our January meeting, and theyreadily agreed that GEO could afford to do this at no additional
cost to our readers.
If ever there were an incentive to write articles for GEO Quarterly,
related to Earth Imaging and Weather Satellites, surely this is it.
Issue 50 is earmarked for June, and the copy deadline is Sunday,
May 29.
As I only return from vacation the previous day, this will probably
delay the magazine’s appearance till late June, but with your help
and cooperation, I cling to the hope that it will be an issue well
worth waiting for.
Suggested Topics for Articles
Topic areas that spring most readily to mind are the talks andpresentations that will be made at the April Symposium inLeicester. These talks alone could probably generate sufficient
text and images for the entire magazine. If you are planning toattend the Symposium, and are prepared take notes and produce
an article, have a word with Francis Bell at the start of the day,basically to prevent duplication: it would be rather counterproductive if several attendees independently submitted reportson the same item.
Many GEO members are regularly downloading huge volumesof data via EUMETCast every day. Why not select a particularlyinteresting image and research features of the region and/or cloud patterns displayed—much in the manner evident in
the NASA Reports in this issue—to produce an attractive shortarticle?
Other viable topic ideas might include• Information about Sentinel 3• Using Linux to receive and process EUMETCast• EUMETCast’s new High Volume Service• Information concerning the new TelliCast client for HVS
And of course, if you have any tips and tricks that improve yoursatellite imaging experience, do please share them.
It would be a great shame if GEO Quarterly 50 can
not be developed into an issue worth reading andpreserving. I suggest that this is an opportunity not tobe missed, but it does require everyone to rally round. I
cannot possibly do this single-handedly.
I look forward to your cooperation, and to receiving regular email
submissions from you during April and May, togeoeditor@geo-web.org.uk
But please don’t leave everything to the last minute. Please doyour utmost to make your submissions well before the May 29
copy deadline.

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March/April 2016

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 49

Francis Bell
Quarterly Question 48 related to naming those islands inthe world which are politically divided between more than one
country. The challenge was to name as many of these islands
and countries as possible. Unfortunately I did not receive many
answers, so I am relying on my own personal researches toprovide a limited answer.
A number of the islands in question are illustrated here, together
with captions saying something about each island. Not included
is our local example of the Republic of Ireland and Northern
Ireland which is politically split between the Republic of Irelandand the UK.
In my travels I have visited four of the six islands mentioned
here, all of them delightful in different ways. I’m sure my list is notcomprehensive so further contributions would be most welcome.

Borneowas colonised by Portugal in the 16th century, and was, up till
November 1975, known as Portuguese Timor. The subsequent
Indonesian occupation of East Timor was characterised by ahighly violent decades-long conﬂict between separatist groups
and the Indonesian military. In 1999, following the UN-sponsoredact of self-determination, Indonesia relinquished control of theterritory, and East Timor became the first new sovereign state of
the 21st century on May 20, 2002.
Image: Wikimedia Creative CommonsHans Island

Borneo is the third-largest island in the world and the largest
island in Asia. The island is divided among three countries:
Malaysia and Brunei in the north, and Indonesia to the south.
Approximately 73% of the island is Indonesian territory. In thenorth, the East Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak make up
about 26% of the island. The sovereign state of Brunei, is locatedon the north coast, and comprises about 1% of Borneo’s landarea.
The May 25, 2015 NOAA 19 APT image shown above was provided by Fred van
den Bosch who lives in Vietnam.

Timor
The island of Timor is split between Indonesia and East Timor,
the sovereign state of East Timor comprising the eastern half of
the island. The country’s size is about 15,400 km2. East Timor

Hans Island is a small, uninhabited barren knoll 1.3 km2 inarea measuring 1,290 × 1,199 metres, located in the centre of
the Kennedy Channel of Nares Strait: the strait that separates
Ellesmere Island from northern Greenland and connects
Baffin Bay with the Lincoln Sea. Hans Island is the smallestof three islands located in the Kennedy Channel. The strait is
35 kilometres wide here, placing the island within the territorial
waters of both Canada and Denmark.
A theoretical line down the middle of the strait passes throughHans island.

www.geo-web.org.uk

Image: Image: Wikimedia Commons
continued overleaf ...

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GEO Quarterly No 49

The Group for Earth Observation

March/April 2016

Saint Martin

Front Cover
It’s 13:00 UT on December 29, 2016, and Storm Frank isbearing down on Great Britain. NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired
this MODIS image of Frank’s cloud mass shortly before it
wreaked havoc over most of the country, causing both winddamage and unprecedented ﬂooding.
Image: LANCE Rapid Response/NASA/GSFC

Inside Front Cover
Enrico Gobbetti received this Meteor M1 image from the 08:32
pass on February 13, 2016. Due to antenna misalignment,
southbound images from this satellite can not be decoded
till the satellite is close to zenith: in this case, imagery starts
above the very north of Scotland.
Saint Martin is an island in the northeast Caribbean,
approximately 300 kilometres east of Puerto Rico. The 87 km2
island is divided roughly 60/40 between France and theNetherlands. The two parts are roughly equal in population. It
is the smallest inhabited island divided between two nations.
The division dates to 1648. The southern Dutch part comprises
Sint Maarten with the northern French part comprising of theCollectivity of St. Martin, and is an overseas collectivity of France.
Image: Eric Gaba / Wikimedia Commons

Inside Back Cover
Improved performance from Meteor M1 in early spring resulted
in this attractive RGB123 image of Great Britain, acquired by
Les Hamilton on March 7 this year. The cyan colouration over
the Scottish Highlands and the English Pennines is indicativeof snow and ice cover.
Back CoverNASA’s Terra satellite captured this image showing ship trails
over the Bay of Biscay on February 20, 2016.
Image: LANCE Rapid Response/NASA/GSFC

Quarterly Question 49
The latest Quarterly Question is straightforward. Name the twocountries shown in the image below, and name the island whichis politically split between them. Answers to Francis Bell please,on or before May 29, 2016, tofrancis@francisbell.com

This MODIS image, captured by NASA’s Terra satellite on March
28, 2003, shows two countries, and including an Island whichis split politically between them. Quarterly Question 49 relates
to naming this island and the two countries involved. To help
recognise the area shown, note that the image dimensions areapproximately 550 × 700 kilometres.
Image: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC

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Storm Abigail, imaged in infrared by Russia’s Meteor M1 at 19:36 UT on the evening of November 12, 2015. For most of Great Britain, the worst
is past, but Scotland’s Western and Northern Isles still face a night of winds of up to 120 kph. On the following day, all schools on the islands wereclosed and all inter-island ferries remained in port.

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March/April 2016

NASA Earth Observatory
Winter storms can blanket Iceland almost entirely withsnow. The relative warmth of summer and autumn,
however, exposes a spectacular, varied landscape.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer(MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired thisnatural-colour view (figure 1) of the Nordic island
nation on November 9, 2015.
According to Thorsteinn Thorsteinsson, a glaciologist at
the Icelandic Meteorological Office, visible snow cover istypical for November, compared with conditions during
the past 15-20 years, but compared with the reference
period of 1961-1990, snow cover was ‘almost certainly’
less than average in the highland and mountain regions
above 400 metres elevation.
The melting of seasonal snow cover accentuates theboundaries of Iceland’s permanent ice caps. The ice
caps appear smooth and rounded in contrast with thesnow-covered interior plateau and the snow-cappedridges along the glacier-carved coastline.

Figure 1 - Iceland on November 9, 2015
Image: LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response

All ice caps in Iceland have been retreating rapidly andlosing volume since 1995. In October 2015, however,scientists from the Icelandic Met Office showed thatthe Hofsjökull ice cap, outlined in red, had gained massaccording to their ground-based measurements.
An ice cap that has gained more mass than it has
lost is said to have a positive mass balance. The
graph (figure 2)shows the annual mass balance ofThjórsárjökull, one of the ice cap’s three basins, since
the start of measurements in 1989. Thjórsárjökull’s massbalance in 2015 was positive for the first time since
1993.

Figure 2 - Annual mass balance of Thjórsárjökull: 1990-2014

The ice cap’s increase in 2015 has been due toabundant winter precipitation and cool summer
temperatures. In spring 2015, the thickness of wintersnowfall on the ice cap’s three basins ranged from 25
to 60 percent above the 1995-2014 average. In thesummer, melting was limited because of cool northerly
winds.
The situation changed in the autumn, as September
and October were unusually warm. When temperaturesrise, melt water flows into the island’s numerous lakes
and reservoirs. Hálslón reservoir, the long and narrow
feature on the east side, holds glacial meltwater.
Öskjuvatn crater lake, Hágöngulón reservoir, and Thórisvatn
natural lake and reservoir also stand out because they
are dark and surrounded by snow.
But one of the more prominent dark features, justsouth of Öskjuvatn, is not water at all—it is actually afresh lava field from the Holuhraun eruption (August
2014 to February 2015). During the eruption, lava
poured from fissures just north of the Vatnajökull ice cap
and near the Bárðarbunga volcano, and by January 2015
had spread across more than 84 square kilometres.
False-colour satellite imagery (figures 3,4) makes it
even more apparent that Holuhraun is not a lake.

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Figure 3 - A lava flow in the Holuhraun Lava Field

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GEO Quarterly No 49

a smooth, rounded appearance that contrasts with thesnow-covered interior plateau of the island as well aswith the rugged, glacier-carved coastlines. Vatnajokull
is the largest of the four, and rests on top of three active
volcanoes. The heat from these volcanoes causes theunderside of the ice cap to melt, slowly building up
meltwater in the volcano’s caldera. When the meltwater
spills over the lip of the caldera, it releases a torrent ofwater known as a glacial melt flood.

Figure 4 - Activity in the Holuhran Lava Field (January 5, 2015)
Image: LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response

True to its name, Iceland is shown in figure 5 covered
in a white blanket of ice and snow. Low layers of clouds
float over the Greenland Sea (left) and the Atlantic Ocean(bottom). Iceland’s southern, low-lying coastlines are
greyish-tan, while the rest of the island remains pristine
white.
The uniform colour hides the exact boundaries of Iceland’s
four permanent ice caps—Langjokull and Hofsjokull in
the interior west, Myrdalsjokull on the southern coast,and Vatnajokull on the eastern coast. The ice caps have

Iceland sits just south of the edge of the Arctic Circle atthe intersection of two tectonic plates, which accounts for
its volcanic activity. Located on a mid-ocean ridge between
the North American and the Eurasian tectonic plates,
Iceland is being slowly pulled in two as the two plates
spread apart. As the plates retreat, magma from deep inthe Earth wells up to the surface. Much of the interior
portion of the island is covered in lava fields.
The harsh climate that might be expected based on theisland’s closeness to the Arctic Circle is softened by thetail end of the Gulf Stream, which flows up through the
Atlantic Ocean bringing heat from the tropics. Unlike its
eastern neighbour, Greenland, large portions of Icelandshake off their wintry cover each year. But between thelava fields, cold deserts, and the tundra that dominates
the northern parts of the island, only about 20-25 percentof the land is habitable, mostly along the south andeastern coasts.

Figure 5 - Iceland under snow, observed by NASA’s Aqua satellite on January 28, 2004.
Image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC

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March/April 2016

NASA Earth Observatory
There was a time when the Northwest
Passage was considered a maritime
Holy Grail, a route highly desired
and sought after, but so elusive. For
most of the recorded history of North
America, the Passage has been nearly
impassable and often deadly. But
with the modernisation of ships andthe warming of the Earth, cruisingand sailing through the CanadianArchipelago from Baffin Bay to theBeaufort Sea has become morecommon: but it’s not necessarily easy.
Figure 1 shows the Northwest Passage
as it appeared on August 31, 2015, to
the Suomi-NPP satellite. According to an
August 31 analysis by the Multisensor
Analysed Sea Ice Extent (MASIE)
product—created by the US National
Ice Center and posted by the National
Snow and Ice Data Center—thenorthern route was considered tobe mostly ice-filled for the sake ofnavigation (figure 2).
An image, acquired on the same dayby the Operational Land Imager (OLI)
on Landsat 8, zooms into the white
rectangle superimposed over theSuomi image (figure 3) and showsthat much of the white covering theNorthwest Passage is cloud cover, notsea ice.

Figure 1 - The Northwest Passage as imaged on August 31, 2015 by the Visible Infrared Imaging
Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) aboard the Suomi-NPP satellite

The Northwest Passage is a complex
winding maze of sounds, channels,
bays and straits that passes throughoften ice-choked Arctic waters.
Mariners refer to two main routes: thesouthern passage and the northern
passage.
The southern route generally follows
that taken by Roald Amundsen
between 1903–1906, when his crew
completed the first successful transit
through the region. The southern
passage goes south of Prince ofWales Island and Victoria Island(and sometimes King William Island)and enters the Beaufort Sea southof Banks Island. It includes several
narrow and shallow waterways thatare better suited to small ships
than large commercial vessels. This
southern or ‘Amundsen’ passage wasopen for several weeks during thesummer of 2015.
The northern passage runs through
Lancaster Sound, Parry Channel,

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Figure 2 - The MASIE map showing the two routes of the Northwest Passage
Image: National Snow and Ice Data Center

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GEO Quarterly No 49
and McClure Strait—waterways thatare wider, deeper, and more suited tolarge ships. In the satellite images, theParry Channel is filled with a melangeof sea ice, though it does not appear
to be completely frozen over.
As NASA ice scientists Walt Meierand Claire Parkison note, the openingof the Northwest Passage is not so
unusual nowadays, particularly along
the southern route. However, withthe warming of the Arctic and theshrinking of sea ice during the past
three decades, the southern passage
is now open more often and for longer
stretches of each summer. According
to Canadian government sources,
as many as transits of this passage
were made as recently as 2012.
The number of ships crossing theNorthwest Passage has been steadily
increasing since the 1980s.

Figure 3 - This Landsat 8 image shows cloud cover in the Northwest Passage.

But even as Arctic sea ice declines,
the opening of the Northwest Passage
is not necessarily a sure bet in any
given year. The Northwest Passage
does not always correlate with theoverall sea ice because it is dependent
to some degree on ice drifting intoand out of the channels. You canhave a relatively high ice year overall
when the passage clears out, yet you
can have a relatively low ice year
such as 2015 when the passage stillcontains ice. There is less ice in recent
years than there used to be, and thepassages are more easily navigable
than formerly, but specific conditions
from year to another can vary
substantially.
A new paper published in GeophysicalResearch Letters notes that a warm
and mostly ice-free Arctic will notnecessarily mean smooth sailingthrough the Northwest Passage any
time soon. The ice that forms in thesechannels and bays is often someof the thickest in all of the Arctic.
That makes it more likely to survive
through the summer at a thickness
that could harm ships.
Image Credits
NASA Earth Observatory images byJesse Allen, using VIIRS data from theSuomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership.
Suomi NPP is the result of a partnership
between NASA, the National Oceanicand Atmospheric Administration, and theDepartment of Defense.
Landsat data from the US Geological
Survey.

Figure 4 - A zoomed section of the Suomi image, highlighting the brash ice and cloud north ofPrince of Wales Island.

www.geo-web.org.uk

Multisensor Analyzed Sea Ice Extent(MASIE) data courtesy of the National
Snow and Ice Data Center.

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John Barfoot - sounio@aol.com
Introduction
Early last year, in GEO Quarterly 45, I explained how twocolleagues from the South Downs Planetarium, Gavin
Myers and Dick Barton *, and I successfully achieved the
EUMETCast changeover by using the TBS-6983 PCIe Cardas described by Mike Stevens in GEO Quarterly 44.
However, we were left with a few ‘wrinkles’ which I listed at
the end of my article. These still remain, but we live withthem as they don’t stop good reception of the MSG HRIT
images. In fact, the ‘disappearing Quality Bar problem’
was cured on my computer by TBS Support who took
control of it by means of TeamViewer. Despite doing thesame on Gavin’s computer, the cure isn’t 100% for somereason: but thanks are due to TBS for the effort they put
into trying to solve the problem.
The BER (Bit Error Rate) problem is still with us but awork-around has been found by Gavin and is described
below.
The BER Problem
As written in GEO Quarterly 45,‘....... the ‘BER’ (Bit Error Rate) on my computer remains
resolutely on zero, whereas with Gavin’s machine, it issometimes zero and sometimes shows numeric values,
accompanied by image segment losses—whenever
the SNR value is between 9.3 and 9.8. Above or below
these numbers, the ‘BER’ is zero and no segments lost.’
Originally, this problem did not affect me because my SNR
was low owing to the physical location of my antenna.
Figure 4 in the previous article shows it mounted on mybalcony with a wrought iron balustrade partially obscuring
the satellite view. Although this worked well, my signal
strength was low and the SNR was only 7.9. I then raised
the antenna by about 100 cm and managed to find thesatellite again (not easy) by viewing my computer screen
by means of TeamViewer on my tablet. The SNR only
improved to over 9.2 typically but I was dismayed to findthat the HRIT images now suffered from missing segments
when it occasionally improved.
It seems that this only occurred when the SNR exceeded
approximately 9.3 and the list of ‘Active PIDs’ showed PID
600—even though this was not on the list of ‘Selected
PIDs’. Once it appeared, PID 600 was impossible todeselect by using ‘Remove PID’, so there was no apparent
way round the problem—except by degrading the reception
back to a lower SNR.
Sometimes, even with PID 600 showing in the list, the BER
would stay at zero and reception would be fine; but assoon as the SNR went above the threshold of 9.3, the BER
would be above zero and missing image segments would
occur.

16The ‘rogue’ PID600 in the Active PIDs list causing the BER figure

The Work-Around
The permanent way round the problem (as devised
by Gavin) is as follows. At computer switch on, set up
alternative program BDAData to run at start-up insteadof TBS IP-data. Cancel any error message which comes up
and let BDAData start up. As soon as the ‘lock’ indicator
goes green on the program window, exit the program. Thenmanually run TBS IP-data and carry on as normal. You
will find that PID 600 does not appear and no missing
segments occur.
Although BDAData and TBS IP-data are both set up not toreceive PID 600, only the BDAData controls this feature of
the card. Luckily for us, the card remembers the BDAData
setting even when it is subsequently set to run withTBS IP-data - which does not.
Can anyone give an explanation, or think of a better way
round this problem? Any information would be gratefullyreceived.
I would be pleased to hear from you at
sounio@aol.com
I’m sad to report that Dr Barton succumbed to a heart attack on
January 7. He will be greatly missed by his family and friends.

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GEO Quarterly No 49

Les Hamilton

Photo: Michelle Hawkins

Around midday on November 3, 2015, a the cloud
phenomenon pictured above appeared in the skies above
Wonthaggi in Victoria, Australia, a formation known as afallstreak hole [1,2].
People tend to come up with wild theories when they see
a bizarre phenomenon like this in the sky for the firsttime. Residents took photos of the large rainbow-filledhole in the clouds that some dubbed a ‘rapture cloud’and there was a host of different ideas as to what thecolourful formation actually was. There were the usual
theories concerning aliens; suggestions that it was related
to a government experiment designed to manipulate theweather; as well as more far-fetched theories such as it
being the end of a wormhole in space or a portent of theend of the world.
Ben Stewart, an IT consultant from Melbourne who waswith his family on Philip Island—about 140 km southsoutheast of Melbourne—spotted the odd cloud formationand likened it to something out of the Independence
Day movie. Stewart related that he and his family had
watched the clouds for a while, trying to determine what
the strange formation was. Stewart said that he had seen
unusual weather patterns many times previously, as hewas growing up in Northern Victoria, but this one wasamong the most bizarre.

However, there’s no reason for people to worry about analien invasion or the end of the world. The phenomenon isneither a UFO nor a sign of impending doom. Formationof a fallstreak cloud—also known as a hole-punch cloud—can occur when the temperature in the clouds is well
below freezing, and is often triggered by the passage of an
aeroplane.
Lower level clouds, where temperatures frequently lie
between zero and -15°C, normally consist almost entirelyof water droplets, not ice crystals. This may come asa surprise when you consider that the freezing pointof water is 0°C but, in the absence of suitable seed
crystals or nuclei (such as suspended ice crystals or dust
particles), water droplets do not spontaneously freeze
until cooled to around -40°C. These water droplets, which
remain liquid at temperatures below 0°C, are said to besupercooled.
An aircraft flying through clouds can seed an abrupt
crystallisation of these droplets, causing ice to form and‘snow out’ along its flight path. The hole left in the cloudis a fallstreak hole.
References
Fallstreak Holes - GEOQ 32 - page 9 (2011)
Fallstreak Holes over West Virginia - GEOQ 32 - page 13 (2011)www.geo-web.org.uk

17

This segment from a November 12, 2015 channel-3 Meteor‑M1 image was acquired
by Jim Scheffler just a few days after the satellite’s revival on November 6.

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ESA
This is one of the first images from Sentinel-3A’s Sea and Land
Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR). Acquired at 11:23 UT
on March 3, 2016, using the instrument’s visible channels, thisfalse-colour image features the Spanish Canary Islands, thePortuguese island of Madeira and the northwest coast of Africa.
The vegetated islands appear red in contrast to the Western
Sahara, which has little vegetation. The snow-capped peak of
Mount Teide on the island of Tenerife is clearly visible.

Both SLSTR and Sentinel-3’s Ocean and Land Colour Instrument(OLCI) will be used to monitor plant health. As the SLSTR scans
Earth’s surface, it senses visible light and infrared radiation(heat) in a number of different spectral channels. The thermal
infrared channels will soon be working once the instrument has
finished outgassing water vapour. This procedure is necessary
because the infrared channels must be cooled to operateproperly. The SLSTR will measure global sea- and land-surface
temperatures every day to an accuracy of better than 0.3ºC.

The Canary Islands and Madeira, imaged by the SLSTR instrument aboard Sentinel-3
Image: ESA © Copernicus data (2016)www.geo-web.org.uk

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GEO Quarterly No 49

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March/April 2016

David Taylor
Twice a year, each spring and autumn, the sun crosses theequator directly behind each geostationary satellite in the Clark
Belt. When the main beam of your EUMETCast dish is in directline of sight with the sun, a sun outage occurs: focussed by
the dish, the LNB is bombarded by the sun’s RF radiation. This
causes a drastic deterioration of the receive C/N (carrier to noise
ratio). Basically, the satellite signal is overwhelmed by unwanted
signals (noise) from the sun. This phenomenon is also known
as Sun Transit Interference. Solar outages only affect downlinks(receivers), not uplinks (transmitters). Be aware that outages
also occur in cloudy conditions, as the RF radiated by the sun isonly dampened slightly by clouds.
A solar outage will effectively cause about 10 minutes loss of
signal from that satellite. On the days before and after the sun
is precisely aligned with a satellite there will be less outage. The
actual days and times depend on your latitude and longitude,
longitudinal position of the satellite, diameter of the dish and thereceived frequency. The larger the dish diameter and higher thefrequency, the shorter time and the fewer days Sun Outages last.
Below is the result of using the output from Ernst Lobsiger’s
TClogSummary program to compare the expected andactual outages due to the sun when it is directly in line with

20

Eutelsat 10A, from which the DVB-S2 service is broadcast. As
the sun is a prolific radio noise source, it causes the signal tonoise ratio of the signal to be decreased, and with the signal level
here in Edinburgh, the decrease is enough to trigger the Ayecka
SR1 to stop receiving the EUMETCast High Volume Service(HVS). Such events can be recorded by TelliCast (see below)
and the times of signal loss and reacquisition are logged.
Below I have listed the results from a two of my systems in
Edinburgh in Spring 2016. As the error-script is only triggered
30 seconds after LOS, 30 seconds must be subtracted from thetime recorded. Similarly, as it is uncertain within 30 seconds as
to when the signal returned, 15 seconds has been added to thelast times recorded as a best approximation. I’ve also plotted thesolar offset so that you can judge how accurately the antenna isaligned. It seems to be that the elevation is spot-on, as the daywith the longest outage was the day with the closest approach.
I plotted the theoretical mid-time of the outage versus the meanof AOS and LOS times, but these results appear much morevariable. Comments welcomed.
Acknowledgement
Thanks to Arne van Belle for providing the explanation as toexactly why solar outages occur.

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NASA Earth Observatory

Lake Poopó was a former saline lake located at an altitudeof approximately 3700 metres in the Bolivian Altiplano
Mountains, and at times spanning an area of some 3,000
square kilometres. Sitting high in the Bolivian Andes, thislake is particularly vulnerable to ﬂuctuations because it isshallow: typically no more than three meters deep. The lefthand image, acquired by the Operational Land Imager (OLI)
on NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite, shows the lake as it was during
April 2013, when it still held water.
Today, however, what used to be Bolivia’s second-largest lake
and an important fishing resource for local communities, hasalmost completely dried out. News reports blame recurrent

drought and the diversion of the lake’s water sources formining and agriculture. The image on the right, which dates
from January 2016, shows the now-arid lake basin.
In a typical year, rainfall during the wet season (December
through March) recharges the lake directly, and via increased
inﬂow from the Desaguadero River. But, more than a month
into the current wet season, drought persists.
This is not the first time that Poopó has evaporated; the lake
last dried up in 1994, and in that instance, it took several
years for water to return, and even longer for ecosystems torecover.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey.

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March/April 2016

John Tellick
As of the end of January 2016, winter in the southeast of Englandhas often been windy, wet and very mild. But thankfully, notas windy and wet as parts of Wales, northern England andScotland, which were buffeted and rained on by autumn storms
Abigail, Barney and Clodagh, all of which caused disruption
during November. And there was no respite as frequent deep
depressions and frontal systems—including storms Desmond,
Eva and Frank—brought record-breaking rainfall over much of
Scotland, Wales and northern England throughout December
and early January. In Scotland, the rainfall record for the entire
month was broken as early as January 8, with repairs to ﬂood
damage likely to exceed a billion pounds. Kent and East Sussex,
however, experienced just a little ﬂooding in the late December
early January period.
Winter finally arrived—for a few days—during the third weekof January when nearby continental high pressure took charge
and kept the stream of Atlantic depressions at bay. Here in
the southeast, we enjoyed some lovely days with crisp, clear
cold sunny days and frosty nights with light winds. However
the Midlands, north of England and Highlands of Scotland inparticular, had heavy snow.

Figure 1 - A weather front clears England on January 22, 2016.
Image © EUMETSAT 2016

Our brief SE taste of winter was cleared away by an Atlantic
depression, the front of which shows up well on the January 22
MSG-3 IR image (figure 1) and 13:20 UT NOAA 19 image(figure 2), which show the front moving across the UK withnorthern Europe clear and covered with snow, still under theinﬂuence of the high pressure area.
Temperatures began to rise again and on January 24 it was 15°C
in my garden at 13:00, where we have had some daffodils inbloom for a couple of weeks now. Geraniums have remained infull bloom in my window boxes throughout the winter and my wild
garlic is already coming into ﬂower (figure 3).
What of the rest of winter? We shall see.

Figure 2 - The weather front imaged by NOAA 19 at 13:20.
Image © EUMETSAT 2016

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Figure 3 - Wild garlic in bloom in the author’s garden in January.

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NASA Earth Observatory
If past events help to predict future ones, then we have probably reached
the peak of the 2015–2016 El Niño event. Warmer than average waters in
the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean should start to cool off and shift westward:
by summer, the tropical Pacific might be back in a neutral state, or La Niña
cooling could kick in, as it has done following major El Niños of the past. But
will the ocean respond in the way it did in 1938 and 1998 this time? Given
that the planet is warmer than at any time in the past 135 years, there are no
guarantees.
According to researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, water temperatures in the Niño3.4 region of the tropical
Pacific [1]—an area that is usually the focal point of such events—broke arecord in December 2015. Sea surface temperatures averaged 2.38° Celsius
above the norm, surpassing December 1997, which was 2.24°C above
normal. For October through December 2015, the three-month temperature
average for the Niño3.4 region was equal to the record high from the samemonths in 1997.
The data maps opposite compare sea surface heights in the Pacific Ocean
as measured by NASA on January 17, 2015, before the event began,and again on January 18, 2016. Note that the January 2015 map shows
remnants of a weak 2014 El Niño event that kick-started the intense
2015-2016 event. The maps below show conditions in the middle of each of
the past 13 months as El Niño has developed.

Figure 1 - January 17, 2015

The measurements come from the altimeter on the Jason-2 satellite andshow averaged sea surface height anomalies. Shades of red indicate where
the ocean stood higher than the normal sea level (warmer water expands tofill more volume). Shades of blue show where sea level and temperatures
were lower than average (due to water contraction). Normal sea-level
conditions appear in white.
In their January 14 update, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Service stated:‘A strong El Niño continued during December, with well above-averagesea surface temperatures across the central and eastern equatorial Paciﬁc
Ocean. El Niño has already produced signiﬁcant global impacts and is
expected to affect temperature and precipitation patterns across the UnitedStates during the upcoming months. Most models indicate that a strong El
Niño will weaken with a transition to ENSO [2]-neutral during the late springor early summer.’

Figure 2 - January 18, 2016

Thus far, precipitation has followed the classic El
Niño patterns observed in the 1997–98 and 1982–83
events. In the southern United States the winter has
been cooler than normal and quite wet, while thePacific Northwest has been soaked by rain and snow
storms. Across the Pacific, Indonesia and other areas
have been dry.
Reference

Figure 3 - 13-month comparison

1 The NINO3.4 index is an El Niño/Southern Oscillation
indicator based on sea surface temperatures, and is
the average sea surface temperature anomaly boundedby 5°N to 5°S and 170°W to 120°W in the Pacific. Thisregion has large variability on El Niño time-scales, andexperiences changes in local sea-surface temperaturethat are important for shifting the large region of rainfall
typically located in the far western Pacific. An El Niño or
La Niña event is identified if the 5-month running-averageof the NINO3.4 index exceeds +0.4°C for El Niño or -0.4°C
for La Niña for at least six consecutive months.
2 ENSO: El Niño–Southern Oscillation.

NASA Earth Observatory maps by Joshua Stevens, using Jason-2 data provided by Akiko Kayashi and Bill Patzert
www.geo-web.org.uk
NASA/JPL
Ocean Surface Topography Team.

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John Tellick
GEO Quarterly has featured ESA Proba satellite
images several times over the years and thislow sun angle Proba-1 image of Ayers Rock inAustralia taken in September 2015 shows that itis still operating well after 14 years in space.
Uluru/Ayers Rock in the Australian outback, isshown here imaged from 600 km away by thesmallest camera on ESA’s smallest satellite—thetechnology demonstrator turned-operational
Earth-observing mission, Proba-1.
Measuring less than one cubic metre, Proba-1
was the first in ESA’s series of satellites aimed
at flight-testing new space technologies. It was
launched in October 2001 as an experimental
two-year mission, but is still going strong after
14 years in orbit, having since been reassigned
to ESA’s Earth observation team.
Proba-1’s main instrument is the Compact
High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (CHRIS),
acquiring 13 square km scenes at 17 metres
spatial resolution in 18 user-selected visible andnear-infrared wavelengths.
This agile satellite can also deliver up to fivedifferent viewing angles, and to date has
acquired nearly 20,000 environmental science
images. Additionally, Proba-1 carries anexperimental High Resolution Camera (HRC)
which acquires monochrome images at 5 metres
resolution.

Figure 1
Uluru, imaged by Proba-1’s HRC on April 24, 2004.
Image: ESA

Other innovations included what were, at thetime, novel gallium-arsenide solar cells, the useof startrackers for attitude control, one of thefirst lithium-ion batteries—now the longest suchitem operating in orbit—and one of ESA’s first
ERC32 microprocessors to run Proba-1’s agile
computer.
Uluru
Towering 348 metres above its surroundings,
the monolithic Uluru was formed fromcompressed layers of sandstone when this partof Australia was a shallow sea.
These layers were subsequently tilted anduplifted and the striations cutting across its
summit result from horizontal sandstonelayering.
Uluru is the world’s largest monolith, and is asacred site to Australia’s Aboriginals. It is 3.6
kilometres in length and two kilometres wide.
The walk around it covers 9.4 kilometres.
Figure 1 shows Uluru as imaged by Proba-1’s
HRC in 2004, Figure 2 shows virtually the same
scene in 2015.

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Figure 2
Uluru, imaged by Proba-1’s HRC on September 8, 2015.
Image: ESA

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GEO Quarterly No 49

NASA Earth Observatory

On February 11, 2016, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)on NASA’s Terra satellite, acquired this natural-colour image of the cloud streets overthe Great Lakes. These long, parallel bands of cumulus clouds form along cylindersof rotating air. But first, cold air from the northwest had to pass over the comparatively
warmer lake water, imparting warmth and moisture into the rising air mass.
NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response. Caption by Kathryn Hansen.

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GEO Quarterly No 49

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March/April 2016

Helen Sharman in her London base talking to Francis Bell about the contact she hadwith the Royal Grammar School, Guildford while she was on the MIR space station.

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Les Hamilton captured this segment from the 08:26 UT Meteor M1 pass on March 3, 2016 using an RTL-SDR dongle and SDRsharp software.
The delicate cyan shading over much of Scotland and the Pennines is indicative of lying snow and ice.

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March/April 2016

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 49

NASA Earth Observatory

This image from Suomi-NPP’s VIIRS instrument shows the heavy January snowfall over the eastern USA, illuminated by moonlight.

A massive winter storm system pummelled the eastern UnitedStates in late January 2016, when two low-pressure systems
merged into a potent nor’easter that dropped heavy snow from
Virginia to New England. By late afternoon on January 23,
snowfall totals were approaching record levels in several states,
and hurricane-force winds were battering the coastlines andleading to serious ﬂooding.
The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on theSuomi NPP satellite acquired this image of the storm system at
07:15 UT on January 23, 2016. The image was composed
through the use of the VIIRS ‘day-night band’, which detects faintlight signals such as city lights, moonlight, airglow, and auroras.
In the image, the clouds are lit from above by the nearly fullMoon and from below by the lights of the heavily populated East
Coast. The city lights are blurred in places by cloud cover (the fullimage appears on the following page). Jeff Halverson, a University of
Maryland meteorologist, summarized the storm system in The
Washington Post as follows:‘Combine a very energetic jet stream disturbance withwarm, Gulf Stream water, a deep sub-freezing air layer,
and tropical moisture, and what you get is an East Coastsnowstorm for the record books. The storm is called anor’easter, or coastal low—a wintertime breed of mid-latitude
cyclone powered by contrasting air temperatures. The Arctic
air mass that recently invaded the mid-Atlantic, combinedwith an unseasonably warm Gulf Stream just offshore, will
provide the necessary temperature contrast.

‘Snow totals have topped 76 centimetres in at least fourstates, and at least 30 centimetres have been recorded at
locations in eight states, with many more hours left to thestorm. Snowfall rates reached as high as eight centimetres
per hour, and blizzard warnings were in effect from Virginia
to Massachusetts throughout January 24. As of 19:30 UT
on January 23, the National Weather Service reported snow
totals 101 centimetres in Glengary, West Virginia, 84 cm inFrederick, Maryland, 60 cm at Dulles Airport and 41 cm at
the National Zoo in Washington.
‘Locations closer to the coast, such as Norfolk, Virginia, saw
no more than ﬁve centimetres of snowfall but dealt with wind
gusts of 120 kilometres per hour. The strong winds over the
Atlantic Ocean piled up seawater along the shore, which
was already high due to the full Moon, a combination thatcaused coastal ﬂooding near Cape May and Ocean City,
New Jersey, and at Lewes, Delaware, where waters rose to
three metres, sending a metre-high storm surge onshore.
‘According to various news reports, at least eight people
have died storm-related deaths, and thousands spenta night stranded in cars and trucks on highways in
Pennsylvania and Kentucky. At least 9,500 ﬂights have beencancelled, and citizens have been ordered to stay off theroads in some cities and towns.’
NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz and Joshua Stevens, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid
Response. Caption by Mike Carlowicz

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March/April 2016

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 49

Francis Bell
From time to time I receive an invitation to give a
presentation to an amateur radio club, relating to GEO
and direct satellite reception. Recently, together withDavid Simmons, I attended a Reading Amateur Radio Club
meeting, where we spent a full evening giving talks
and demonstrating equipment for weather satellite
reception. I think the evening went well and prompted
much discussion afterwards with the appreciative andtechnically very competent club members.
In anticipation of passing on some of the detailedreferences made during the evening I had prepared an
information sheet which was distributed at the end of themeeting.

2 Satellite Predictions
For satellite prediction times for the Reading area, go to
http://heavens-above.com/
Click ‘Change your observation location’ and enter your station’s
coordinates. For example, try 51.3°N, 0.70°S for Reading.
Satellites of interest are NOAA 15, NOAA 18, NOAA 19,
Meteor M1, Meteor M2, and ISS.
To display the times for each satellite click on ‘Satellite Data
Base’, then type in the satellite name exactly as shown above.
Finally, click the ‘Update’ box then ‘All Passes’.

3 Frequencies and Times for Polar Satellites:
NOAA 19137.1 MHz
about 1.00 pm
NOAA 18
137.91 MHz
about 12.00 noon
NOAA 15137.50 MHz
about 4.00 pm
Meteor M1
137.1 MHz
about 8.0 am
Meteor M2
137.1 MHz
about 10.0 am
Note that these passes are also available overnight, atapproximately 12 hours later. Also, all the above times may be± about 45 minutes according to any specific orbit. The NOAA
satellite signals are FM with a bandwidth of about 45 kHz anddecoding software is quite widely available free of charge
For the NOAA satellites, try WXtoImg from
GEO’s busy stand at the Harwell and District radio rally heldin February 2016. David Simmons can be seen talking to visitors
who generally expressed interest in our group with several ofthem buying SDR dongles to progress their own data reception.
The computers showed examples of both polar orbiting andgeostationary satellites images, and judging by how much wastaken during the day, our literature was also well received.

A few days later, both by email and when David and I
were at the Harwell Radio Rally manning the GEO stand,I received several requests for a copy of the information
sheet distributed earlier at Reading. With these requests in
mind, I have reproduced the contents of this sheet below.
Remember, this is only the briefest summary relating tosatellite image reception, but for an absolute beginner it
provides some useful references.
1 The International Space Station ( ISS )These websites show live views from experimental cameras on
the ISS but are subject to orbit and communication links. For
camera links, visit
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/iss-hdev-payload
and for the audio ground link, and sometimes video from inside
the space station, visit
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/iss_ustream.html
For a full screen image click the bottom right corner of thecamera image.

www.wxtoimg.com
For the Meteor M1 and M2 signals, which are digital LRPT, referto Les Hamilton’s article in GEO Quarterly No. 48, pages 27-32.
Note that, currently, Meteor M2’s LRPT is switched off, butMeteor M1 is transmitting.

4 European Satellites
The European agencies EUMETSAT and ESA operate a number
of weather and Earth observation satellites in both polar andgeostationary orbits. Images from these satellites are being
disseminated continuously 24/7 so, once a receiving station isestablished, there is an almost non-stop stream of incoming
image data.
Requirements for Home / Personal Reception• A dish about 85 cm diameter or a little larger, together witha suitable LNB• a good coax connection to a receiver which is usuallysituated next to a computer• a newish computer with software fast enough to deal with
the incoming data
• a decryption dongle from EUMETSAT, plus software todisplay the incoming data.
Once established, such a system will run indefinitely.
Likely costs• Dish and LNB - be resourcefulwww.geo-web.org.uk

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GEO Quarterly No 49

The Group for Earth Observation• Receiver, about £350 from GEO• a licence and dongle from EUMETSAT - £70 (a once only
payment)• Software, approximately £50, again a one off payment, butthere are free options.
Software for Displaying Geostationary Satellite Images
Free software is available from Rob Alblas in the Netherlands at
http://www.alblas.demon.nl/wsat/index.html
http://www.alblas.demon.nl/wsat/software/index.html
You can also email Ron atMarch/April 2016

http://rtlsdr.org/softwarewindows
There are some variables according to the chipset in the dongle,
and your computer’s chipset and operating system, hence thisadvice to download directly your own software. Just follow theon-screen guidelines on this website.
6 The GEO Website.
Go to the GEO website for almost anything you want to know
about the reception of polar orbiting and geostationary weather
satellite images
www.geo-web.org.uk
Also, follow GEO news items on Twitter, Facebook and User Groups
linked from the GEO website.

kunstmanen@alblas.demon.nl
with a request for software.
Alternatively, you can obtain outstanding, easy to use software
for a modest charge from David Taylor atwww.satsignal.eu

To join GEO, for £15, fill in and submit the form on the website at
http://www.geo-web.org.uk/shop.php
7 UK Space Activities

From the opening page there is a sub menu ‘Satellite Tools’
from which you should select ‘MSG Data Manager’, the softwarefor EUMETCast reception (MSG means: ‘ Meteosat Second
Generation’).

5 Software Deﬁned Radio Dongles

The publication ‘Space: UK’ is available free of charge: just sendan email to
info@ukspaceagency.bis.gsi.gov.uk
stating that you would like to receive a printed copy of‘Space:UK’, and providing your full name and address. Say thatyou want the publication for personal use.

If you are intent on receiving images from the Russian Meteor
satellites without having to purchase an expensive receiver, an
RTL-SDR dongle is the receiver of choice. For software to drive
the SDR dongle, visit

For a more comprehensive view of UK space activities, visit

Hi Les,Glacier along the southern coast of Alaska. Not indicatedin the image is the scale. The mouth of the glacier, where
it meets the Gulf of Alaska, is about 100 kilometresacross.

Thank you for another superbly interestingmagazine No 48. I’m writing to say how useful I havefound Barry Smith’s “What’s Your Horizon” article, andthe www.heywhatsthat.com website, which I had notencountered before. As a mapaholic, APT dabbler, radio
Tx and Rx hobbyist, and living in a fairly hilly part of theWest Midlands where Freeview propogation has been
problematic, this tool would have proved invaluable tome before, for several purposes, and I’m so grateful it has
been publicised.
Please pass my thanks to Barry!
Regards,
Colin Prior, Halesowen, West Midlands.

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https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/space-sector-magazine-spaceuk

During the Klondike Gold Rush in fall and winter of
1897/1898, at least four parties attempted to cross theglacier northward toward the gold fields in Canada, about
500 km away. There were many people out to make abuck off the ignorant gold seekers, not the least of whichwere ship owners along the west coast of the US, whowanted to put their worn-out ships to use. The parties,
about 100 men, were all suckers for the corrupt claims ofan easy route to gold by sailing to Yakutat Bay adjacent to
the Malaspina Glacier.

Hi Les

The route was so treacherous that 41 died trying toreach the Klondike. One party of nineteen required threemonths just to cross the glacier, but when this group had
dwindled to nine survivors, they decided to turn back.
Only four completed the trip to the coast alive.

I thought you might be interested in some additional
information to go with your image of the Malaspina

Best regards,
Whitham Reeve, Anchorage, Alaska, USA.

www.geo-web.org.uk

This Meteor M1 image from December 6, 2015 reveals striking detail of the White Mountain Range that stretches through New Hampshire and Maine.
Also prominent in this scene, posted on GEO-Subscribers by Hendricus Lulofs, are Cape Cod and Long Island.

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GEO Quarterly No 49

The Group for Earth Observation

March/April 2016

A NASA Earth Observatory Report

In elementary school, students learn that water freezes at 0°
Celsius, which is true most of the time: but there are exceptions
to the rule. For instance, water containing very few impurities—
such as dust or pollution particles, fungal spores, and bacteria—
can be chilled to much cooler temperatures and still remainliquid, a process known as supercooling.
Supercooling may sound exotic, but it occurs pretty routinely
in Earth’s atmosphere. Altocumulus clouds, a common typeof mid-altitude cloud, are mainly composed of water droplets
supercooled to a temperature of about -15°C. Altocumulus clouds
with supercooled tops cover about 8% of Earth’s surface at any
given time.
Supercooled water droplets play a key role in the formation ofhole-punch and canal clouds, the distinctive features shown inthis satellite image. Hole-punch clouds—also called fallstreak
clouds—usually appear as circular gaps in decks of altocumulus
clouds; canal clouds look similar but the gaps are longer andthinner. This natural-colour image shows both hole-punch andcanal clouds over Mississippi and Louisiana, as observed on

32

December 29, 2015, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Terra satellite.
Both these phenomena form when aircraft ﬂy through clouddecks rich with supercooled water droplets, and produce
aerodynamic contrails. Air expands and cools as it moves aroundthe wings and past the propeller, a process known as adiabatic
cooling. Air temperatures above jet wings often cool by as muchas 20 Celsius degrees, pushing supercooled water droplets tothe point of freezing.
As ice crystals form, they absorb nearby water droplets. Ice
crystals are relatively heavy, so they tend to sink. This triggers
tiny bursts of snow or rain that leave gaps in the cloud cover.
Whether a cloud formation develops hole-punch or canal
depends on the thickness of the cloud layer, the air temperature,and the degree of horizontal wind shear. Both descending andascending aircraft—including jets and propeller planes—cantrigger hole-punch and canal clouds.
NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response. Caption byAdam Voiland.

www.geo-web.org.uk

Mike Stevens submitted this splendid, nearly cloud-free Metop-1 image of New Zealand, that he obtained via EUMETCast on March 2, 2016.
Image © EUMETSAT 2016www.geo-web.org.uk

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GEO Quarterly No 49

The Group for Earth Observation

March/April 2016

Mike Stevens
Well, here we go again: yet another PCIe Card from ourfriends over in the Far East, and an extremely good Tuner
it is. I have been testing one of these TBS-6903 cards since
September 2015 on both the EUMETCast Basic and High
Volume services and, as I write this short article, it isticking away in the background receiving the Basic Service
without any packet loss.
This tuner is now in production and is available from the
TBS Website. In addition, we have a UK Company who will
be stocking these units and who will give GEO Members alittle discount. You can contact me for details atstevens312@btinternet.com
Basic Speciﬁcations• Frequency Range: 950-2150 MHz• Dual Channels: DVB-S2/S 8PSK, QPSK 16APSK,32APSK ACM/VCM• Supports: CCM, ACM, VCM, Multiple Transport
Stream• Supports Data Burst & Tone Burst• Supports DiSEqC2.X and Motor• Works on Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10/Linux• Available PCI Express x1, x4, x8, or x16 Slots.

The TBS-6903 Tuner Card

The demodulator, is a more robust reliable and advanced
chip giving excellent selectivity and sensitivity, and is ideal
for EUMETCast reception.
I don’t think I need to go into the full details of installationand set-up as past issues, especially last December’s one,
GEO Quarterly 48, carry full details on both installationand software.
You will of course have to download all the latest softwarefrom the TBS Website on
tbsdtv.com/downloads
and install according to my instructions in the previous
Quarterly. And don’t forget the dpinst32/64 file: this ismost important.
I think that, in the future, we are going to see many more
tuners and cards from TBS and, with all the advancements
in satellite technology providing ever better (and more)data and information from EUMETSAT, we have someexciting times ahead of us

This image acquired from Metop-2 on September 20 last year illustrates
what can be achieved with the TBS-6903 Tuner Card
Image © EUMETSAT 201534

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The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 49

NASA Earth Observatory
Two kinds of waves are visible in theimage opposite, yet neither is thekind you are probably familiar with.
At 03:05 UT on February 10, 2016,
the Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on
NASA’s Terra satellite acquired
this natural-colour image of wave
patterns off the coast of Western
Australia. Well offshore to the northand west, atmospheric waves are
made visible by parallel bands ofwhite clouds. Closer to the coast, thebright area of water is sunglint: thereflection of sunlight directly backtoward the satellite imager. This
sunglint makes it possible to see
the faint ripples of internal waves,large waves that propagate below thewater surface, within the depths ofthe sea.
Waves form in the atmosphere fora variety of reasons. Sometimes the
movement of an air mass over anelevated feature such as a mountainridge, a volcano, or an island amidst
a flat sea, will force air to rise thensink, creating ripples in the sky
like those propagating across thesurface of a pond. At other times, thecollision between different air masses
can cause a rippling effect.
It is unclear what caused theatmospheric waves in this image. Off
the west coast of Africa, we often see
waves form when the dry air fromthe Sahara moves out over the muchmoister air over the tropical Atlantic
Ocean. The dry air tends to push the
moist air higher into the atmosphere,causing water vapour to form
droplets and amass into clouds. The
moist air rises, then gravity pulls itback down; the warm air rises again,
then falls again. A series of cloud
ripples mark the edges of the wave
front as it propagates and dissipates.
It is also possible (though perhaps
less likely because of the distance)that the wave patterns in the image
have their origin inland. Western
Australia is mostly desert andrelatively flat, so it is possible thatan atmospheric wave pattern could
have formed when an air mass rodeup over the Hamersley Range (justoutside the scene) and out toward
the sea.

Gravity Waves to the West of Australia
Image: NASAInternal waves are quirky phenomenathat were scarcely known to science
until the satellite era. They can be
hundreds of metres tall and tens
to hundreds of kilometres long.
Enhanced by sunglint in the image
above, these long wave forms moving
across the sea surface are a visible
manifestation of slow waves moving
tens to hundreds of metres beneaththe sea surface.
Internal waves form because theocean is layered. Deep water is cold,dense, and salty, while shallower
water is relatively warmer, lighter,and fresher. The differences in density
and salinity cause layers of the ocean
to behave like different fluids. Whentides, currents, and other large-scaleeffects of Earth’s rotation and gravity
drag water masses over some sea
floor formations, they can create wave
actions within the sea that are similar
to those happening in the atmosphere.
If you were on a boat, you would notnecessarily see or feel internal waves
because they are not expressed at
the surface as different wave heights.
Instead, they show up as smootherand rougher water surfaces that are
visible from satellites. As internal
waves move through the deep ocean,www.geo-web.org.uk

the less dense water above flows up
and down the crests and troughs.
Surface water bunches up over thetroughs and stretches over the crests,
creating alternating lines of calm waterat the crests and rough water at thetroughs. Calm, smooth waters reflect
more light directly back to the satellite,
resulting in a bright, pale stripe along
the length of the internal wave. The
rough waters in the trough scatter
light in all directions, forming a darkline.
‘There are definitely ocean internal
waves in this image,’ statedenvironmental engineer Nicole Jonesof The University of Western Australia.
‘We have measured them off the coastof Ningaloo with instruments in thewater. The different directions of the
wave fronts are most likely due to thedifferent sea floor slope directionsin this region.’ She also noted thatinternal waves play an important rolein global ocean circulation and mixing,
which is critical to an understanding
the ocean’s role in climate and in the
movement of nutrients and carbon
from the depths to the surface andback. Jones and colleagues also study
internal waves for their potential
impact on drill rigs and other offshore
structures.

35One of the most severe Atlantic storms ever, ‘Frank’, swept northward to the west of the UK on
December 29-30, 2015, subjecting the entire British Isles to 110 kph gales, increasing to 140 kph over
the western and northern isles. This channel‑4 infrared image was acquired by Metop‑A at 20:27 UT.

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This beautiful Meteor‑M1 RGB123 image of the Balkans, Italy and eastern Mediterranean was
acquired by Alex (Happysat) from his station in the Netherlands on November 13, 2015.

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GEO Quarterly No 49

The Group for Earth Observation

March/April 2016

ESA
Just two weeks after launch, the latest Sentinel satellite
has offered a taster of what it will provide for the EU’s
Copernicus Earth observation programme. Sentinel-3A’s very
first image, captured at 14:09 UT February 29, shows thetransition from day to night over Svalbard, Norway. As well
as showing the snow-covered archipelago, the image alsodetails Arctic sea ice and some cloud features.

Volker Liebig, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation
Programmes, stated:‘This first image already reveals the true versatility of
Sentinel-3A. The mission will be at the heart of a wide
range of applications, from measuring marine biologicalactivity to providing information about the health ofvegetation. Given its extensive payload, Sentinel-3A is areal workhorse that is set to make a step change in thevariety of data products provided to users.’
Carrying a suite of instruments working together,
Sentinel-3A is arguably the most complex of all theCopernicus Sentinels. Once commissioned, it will
systematically measure Earth’s oceans, land, ice andatmosphere to monitor large-scale global dynamics
and provide critical near-realtime information for
ocean and weather forecasting.
Philippe Brunet, Director of the European
Commission’s Directorate-General for Internal Market,
Industry, Entrepreneurship and Small- and Mediumsized Enterprises, said,

The first image acquired by Sentinel 3A
Image ESA

Another image (below), delivered at 17:44 UT on the sameday, features California, Arizona and Mexico, and also
captures the city of Los Angeles.

‘The launch of Sentinel-3A further expands the ﬂeetof dedicated missions for Copernicus services. Thismission is particularly important as it will contribute to
the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service
and the global land component of the Copernicus Land
Service.’
Following the satellite’s launch and early operations
phase, which was completed in record time, it will
spend the next five months being commissioned forservice. Given its extensive payload, Sentinel-3A
promises to be a real workhorse that is set to make a
step-change in the variety of data products provided tousers.
Once commissioned, ESA will hand over satellite
operations to EUMETSAT. The mission will thenbe managed jointly, with ESA generating the land
products and EUMETSAT the marine products forapplication through the Copernicus services.
Alain Ratier, EUMETSAT’s Director-General, added:

Sentinel 3A imaged California and Los Angeles
Image ESAOn the following page is shown an image acquired on
March 1, which includes Spain, Portugal, the Strait ofGibraltar and North Africa.
A;; these images were captured by Sentinel 3A’a Ocean andLand Colour Instrument (OLCI). With heritage from Envisat,
this new instrument has 21 spectral bands, a resolution of
300 metres and a swath width of 1270 kilometres.
Offering new eyes on Earth, OCLI will allow ocean
ecosystems to be monitored. It will also support vegetation,
crop conditions and inland water monitoring as well as
providing estimates of atmospheric aerosol and clouds—allof which bring significant benefits to society through more
informed decision-making.

38‘This first image is a promise to the marine user
community. As the operator of the Sentinel-3 marine
mission, we are delighted to see the first fruit of ourcooperation with ESA and the European Commission,
and we are looking forward to delivering many more
images and products to users after the commissioning.
These first images are just the beginning. OLCI was
the first instrument to be switched on. In the comingdays there will be more news from Sentinel-3’s
altimeter, which measures the height of the ocean
surface, and the radiometer, designed to measure landand sea-surface temperatures.
Acknowledgement
Thanks to John Tellick for sourcing this material for
GEO Quarterly.

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Featuring Spain, Portugal and North Africa, this is one of the first images from the Sentinel-3A satellite. The image was taken by the satellite’s
Ocean and Land Colour Instrument on March 1, 2016 and clearly shows the Strait of Gibraltar between the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Swirlsof sediment and algae in the seawater can be seen along the southwest coast of Spain and along the coast of Morocco. The instrument picks
out Morocco’s dry desert, snow-covered peaksof the Atlas Mountains and greener vegetated northern areas of Spain.
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Image © ESA/Copernicus data (2016)

This NOAA 19 APT image from Alex (Happysat),acquired in mid afternoon on February 28, shows
what appears to be a plume of sand blowing over the Mediterranean Sea from the Libyan desert.

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The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 49

John Tellick
GEO Quarterly has published images of this phenomenon this in the past but there have been some really good imagesof cloud streets recently. A particularly impressive one was captured by NASA’s MODIS instrument on its Terra satellite
at 15:35 UT on February 14, 2016 along the eastern seaboard of the US, as shown in the image below. On that day ahigh pressure area brought strong, very cold winds from the north and northwest across much of the region and out into
the Atlantic, where it blew over warmer water forming the cloud rolls typical of this phenomenon.

These Cloud Streets off the eastern seaboard of the USA were captured by NASA’s Terra satellite on February 14, 2016.
NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response.

Cloud streets are long parallel bands of cumulus clouds
which form when cold air blows over warmer water anda warmer air layer (temperature inversion) rests over the
top of both. The water gives up heat and moisture to thecold air above it, and columns of heated air naturally risethrough the atmosphere. The temperature inversion acts

like a lid so, when the rising thermals hit it, they roll overand loop back on themselves, creating parallel cylindersof rotating air. As this happens, the moisture cools andcondenses into cumulus clouds that line up parallelwith the direction of the prevailing winds. Other recent
examples are shown on pages 42-44.

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In this Metop-02 channel‑4 infrared image, cloud streets are seen forming as cold air
blows eastward from Sakhalin island over the Sea of Okhotsk on January 30, 2016.
Image © EUMETSAT 201642www.geo-web.org.uk

This December 26, 2015 channel-4 infrared image from Metop-02 shows Svalbard interrupting a lineof cloud streets that formed as cold air from the Arctic ice pack advected across the Greenland Sea.
Image © EUMETSAT 2015www.geo-web.org.uk

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44

Though not so recent, a low sun angle in this Metop-02 image acquired on September
20, 2011 shows cloud streets off the coast of Antarctica to advantage.
Image © EUMETSAT 2011www.geo-web.org.uk

March/April 2016

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 49

NASA Earth Observatory
Iceberg B-09B is on themove again. For several
years, the 50-kilometrelong ice island has been
jammed up a bay in East
Antarctica and creating
desperate times for acolony of penguins.
Now it is drifting into theSouthern Ocean again.
B-09B is a remnant ofIceberg B-09, which broke
off from the Ross Ice
Shelf in the late 1980s.
By 1993, B-09B had
become grounded in the
Wilkesland Sea, near the
Mertz ice shelf.
But the berg’s journeyaround East Antarctica
continued, and theremnant ice pummelled
the ﬂoating snout of Mertz
Glacier in February 2010.
The collision createda new, large berg and
B-09B again came to ahalt at the end of 2010,
parking in Commonwealth
Bay off East Antarctica,
where it has sinceremained.
During the following five
years, Commonwealth
Bay transformed fromfrequently open water
to an area beset by
year-round sea ice. The
collection of icebergs
north of the bay—principally B-09B, but also
others including C-15 andC-29—blocked sea icefrom drifting westward
with the ocean currents.
As a result, fast ice
accumulated in the bay,
growing as much as threemeters thick. A colony
of Adélie penguins that
had once lived near thewater’s edge at Cape Denison
suddenly had to shufﬂe
60 kilometres to find open
water and food. And without
sufficient food to raise theirchicks, the colony’s population
plummeted.

Figure 1 - Commonwealth Bay, Antarctica, filled with fast ice and blocked on February 18, 2013

Figure 2 - Commonwealth Bay, Antarctica, nowopen water in February 18, 2016

The bay was transformed
again in February 2016
when its sea ice broke up,providing access to Cape
Denison for the first time insix years. Figure 1 shows
the situation February 18,

2013 with Commonwealth
Bay completely blocked by
B-09B and filled with fast ice.
Figure 2, which was acquired
on February 18, 2016 afterIceberg B-09B had drifted
offshore, shows the bay to be

www.geo-web.org.uk

ice free. Both MODIS images
were acquired by NASA’s
Aqua satellite.
NASA Earth Observatory images
by Jesse Allen, using data from theLevel-1 and Atmospheres Active
Distribution System (LAADS).

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NASA Earth Observatory
Hurricane Season is considered to last from June 1 till
November 30 in both the north Atlantic Ocean and thecentral Pacific Ocean. But this is not exclusively so,and Alex, which evolved from a tropical depression on
January 14, became the earliest hurricane in the Atlanticbasin since 1938 and just the fourth January hurricane in
150 years of records. And just three days before, tropicalstorm Pali strengthened into the earliest hurricane everrecorded over the Central Pacific Basin.
Hurricane Alex
This storm developed some 800 kilometres south of the
Azores as a Category-1 hurricane, but weakened before
making landfall on Terceira Island as a tropical storm thefollowing day. Alex prompted hurricane and tropical storm
warnings for the Azores and the closure of schools andbusinesses, but in the event brought only gusty winds andheavy rain to the archipelago, causing only minor damage.
Alex was not just unusual for being a hurricane in thedead of winter; it was also unusual as just the second
storm on record to form so far north and east in the
Atlantic (30°N, 30°W). The map below shows the track ofAlex relative to the tracks of all reported storms in NOAA’s
record from 1842 to 2015.

Figure 2 - Hurricane Alex

NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response

According to Jason Samenow of The Washington Post, thefirst named Atlantic storm usually forms on July 9. Only
0.5 percent of tropical storm activity in the Atlantic has
ever occurred prior to the start of June.
Hurricane Pali
Pali became a hurricane nineteen days earlier than theprevious record holder, Hurricane Ekeka of 1992. The
Central Paciﬁc Hurricane Center noted that Pali provided‘yet another record to stack on the ever-growing pile ofrecent records due in large part to the ongoing strong El
Niño.’

Figure 1 - The track of Hurricane Alex

NASA map by Joshua Stevens, using data from NOAA and Unisys Weather

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer(MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this view ofhurricane Alex shown in figure 2. Two hours after theimage was acquired, the storm was reported to havesustained winds of 140 kilometres per hour and a centralpressure of 981 millibars.
Hurricanes do not typically form when sea surface
temperatures are below 26°C, yet Alex to formed whenwater temperatures in the northeast Atlantic were roughly
22°C. But these water temperatures were 0.5° to 1.0°
warmer than normal. More importantly, a low-pressure
trough in the upper atmosphere meant air temperatures
aloft were quite cool compared with the water below, andthe decrease in temperature from the surface to upper
levels was strong enough to create convective instability.
Thunderstorm activity gradually caused upper level
warming so that the system transitioned from an extratropical to a tropical cyclone.

46

Also notable was Pali’s location. The map below shows thepath of Pali from January 7-12, 2016, in context with all
global storm tracks in NOAA’s record from 1842 through2015. Historically, not many storms have ventured so close
to the equator so far out in the middle of the Pacific basin.
Pali’s track appears relatively erratic and loopy because thestorm is situated within a zone of low pressure, blocked
to the north by a belt of high atmospheric pressure andFigure 3 - The track of Hurricane Pali

NASA map by Joshua Stevens, using data from NOAA and Unisys Weather

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GEO Quarterly No 49

Figure 4 - Hurricane Pali

NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Responsewinds blowing from the east, and blocked to the south
near the equator by strong winds blowing from the west..
Figure 4, captured by the MODIS instrument aboard
NASA’s Terra satellite, shows the storm spinning overthe central Pacific, where Pali had developed a clear eye
as well as pronounced cirrus banding along much of its
perimeter.

Using observations made shortly after this image
was acquired, meteorologists classified the storm as
a Category-1 hurricane with maximum sustained
winds of 140 kilometres per hour. Its location, some
2,300 kilometres northeast of Hawaii, meant that Pali’s
main effect was to churn up higher-than-usual surf. The
cyclone peaked on January 12 as a Category-2 storm, thenweakened back to category 1 the following day.

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March/April 2016

NASA Earth Observatory
A ﬂoating shelf of ice attached to the coast of
Antarctica appears ready to shed an iceberg
into the Southern Ocean. Over the course of two
years, a small crack in the Nansen Ice Shelf has
grown large enough to spread across nearly its
entire width. The Operational Land Imager (OLI)
on NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite acquired the images
opposite on December 26, 2013, and again on
December 16, 2015.
Ice shelves line the perimeter of Antarctica andcome in all shapes and sizes. The Nansen shelfmeasures about 35 × 50 km while the nearby
Drygalski Ice Tongue, just to the south of it,
stretches 80 kilometres into the sea [1].
These ﬂoating shelves are important for holdingback the ﬂow of ice from the interior of thecontinent to the sea. Ice that sloughs from aﬂoating shelf does not raise sea level. But whenpart of the ice shelf is lost, the seaward ﬂow ofland ice can accelerate—a phenomenon that
contributes to sea level rise.

The Nansen Ice Shelf, imaged by the Landsat OLI in December 2013.

Christine Dow and Ryan Walker, scientists at
NASA Goddard, visited the ice shelf in November
and December 2015. Their goal was to install GPS
stations on the ice shelf to record its subtle ﬂexing
due to ocean tides. On December 10, they ﬂew
along the crack in a helicopter while looking forsites to install the GPS stations. Dow captured thephotograph opposite during the ﬂight.
‘There’s a huge crack, miles long andsometimes over a hundred yards wide, whichruns more or less parallel to the front of theice shelf,’ wrote Walker in a blog post at
the time. ‘Over the winter, the sea surface
freezes and traps small icebergs in the crack,
producing a fascinatingly broken ices cape.’
In early March 2016, with southern winter soon to
set in, satellite imagery indicated that the cracking
ice front was still attached to the shelf. Even in
winter, strong winds can prevent the water beyond
the shelf from freezing, so it is unclear whether
the front will separate soon or hang on like a loose
tooth.

The Nansen Ice Shelf, imaged by the Landsat OLI in December 2016.

Dow is talking with researchers about
examining the crack during the coming
summer ﬁeld season. ‘I’m really interested to
see whether this feature is occurring becauseof the topography around the ice shelf, orwhether it was initially created by surface
water ﬂowing into a small ice surface crack,’
she said. ‘We’re planning an intensive surveyof this feature in the coming years and will
hopefully get a handle on the causes.’
Reference
1 B15A Iceberg Latest - GEOQ6, page 11 (2005)

48

The crack across the Nansen Ice Shelf, photographed in March 2016.
Photo: Ryan Walker / NASA / GSFC

NASA Earth Observatory images by Jesse
Allen, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey
www.geo-web.org.uk
Caption by Kathryn Hansen

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GEO Quarterly No 49

EUMETCast On-Line
Registration Guide
If you require to register as a first-timeuser for any of the free EUMETCast
data streams such as MSG, NOAAAVHRR, Metop etc., or need to renew
an existing subscription, this must be
done on-line.
GEO has produced a step-by-stepguide to the entire process at
http://www.geo-web.org.uk/eumreg.
phpThis guide also contains a direct linkto the official EUMETCast on-line
registration form, which can otherwise
prove somewhat tricky to locate.

Weather Satellite Reports
If there is a single Internet Forumthat is relevant to all weather satellite
enthusiasts, it must surely be Douglas
Deans’ Weather Satellite reports.
Here you will find every conceivabletype of information about weather
satellites, whether polar or
geostationary, APT, HRPT, LRIT,
EUMETCast or whatever.
Absolutely everything is covered, andthe information is updated every week.
Special additional bulletins may be
issued if an important change takes
place mid week.
You can read the bulletins from thisURL
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/weather-satellite-reports/info
or, even better, elect to have thereports sent to you by email every
Monday.

Internet Discussion Groups
There are a numerous Internet-based
discussion groups of interest to weather
satellite enthusiasts. The home pagefor each group provides an email
address through which you can request
membership. Even a blank email
containing the word ‘subscribe’ in its
Subject line is all that is required.
APT Decoder
This is a group where users ofPatrik Tast’s APTDecoder can share
information and problems.
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/APTDecoder/info
GEO-Subscribers

50This is GEO’s own group, where
members can exchange information

The Group for Earth Observationand post queries relating to any aspect
related to weather satellite reception(hardware, software, antennas etc),
Earth observation satellites and any
GEO-related matter.
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/GEO-Subscribers/info
Satsignal
An end-user self‑help group for users ofDavid Taylor’s Satellite Software Tools(SatSignal, WXtrack, GeoSatSignal,
HRPT Reader, GroundMap, MSG DataManager, AVHRR Manager and the
ATOVS Reader).
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/SatSignal/info
MSG-1
A forum dedicated to Meteosat
Second Generation (MSG), where
members share information about the
EUMETCast reception hardware andsoftware.
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/MSG-1/info
WXtoImg-l
A forum for users of the WXtoImg
software application for receiving andprocessing imagery from the NOAA
satellite APT signals.
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/wxtoimg-l/info

GEO Helplines
Douglas Deans, Dunblane, Scotland.
All aspects of weather satellites from
APT, HRPT to Meteosat-9 DVB/EUMETCast systems.
• telephone:(01786) 82 28 28• e-mail: dsdeans@btinternet.com
John Tellick, Surrey, England.

March/April 2016
Mike Stevens, Dorset, England.
Assistance with reception of
EUMETCast to include Metop-A andMetop-B; also MSG Data reception
and set-up within the PC, assistancewith dish alignment and set-up, andinstallation and set-up of TBS DVB-S2
units.
• email: mikeg4cfz@gmail.com
Guy Martin, Kent, England.
Guy is prepared to advise anyone who
wishing to receive MSG/Metop using
Windows 2000 or XP. Can also help
with networking and ADSL router setup.
•

gmartin@electroweb.co.uk

Hector Cintron, Puerto Rico, USA.
Hector is prepared to field enquiries on
HRPT, APT, EMWIN and NOAAPORT••

Phone: 787-774-8657
e-mail: n1tkk@hwic.net

Email contact can of course be madeat any time, but we would ask you torespect privacy by restricting telephone
contact to the period 7.00 - 9.00 pm in
the evenings.

Copy for GEO Quarterly
Original contributions relating to
any aspect of Earth Imaging should
be submitted in electronic format(although handwritten and typed copy
will be accepted).
Please note that major articles whichcontain a large number of illustrations
should be submitted as early as
possible before copy deadline,
to give time for preparation prior to
publication.

Meteosat advice: registering for thevarious MSG services, hardware
and software installation andtroubleshooting. John will also
field general queries about any
aspect of receiving weather satellite
transmissions.

Please note that it is preferred thatsatellite images are provided without
added grid lines, country outlines or
captions unless these are consideredessential for illustrative purposes in an
accompanying article.

• telephone: (0208) 390 3315
• e-mail: info@geo-web.org.uk

Materials for publication should be sent
to the editor,
Les Hamilton
8 Deeside Place
Aberdeen AB15 7PW
ScotlandThe most efficient way to do this is byemail attachments to the following
address

Geoff Morris, Flintshire, NE Wales.
Geoff has lots of experience with aerial,
coax connectors, mounting hardware
etc. and has also done a lot of work withthe orbiting satellites. Geoff has beena EUMETCast Meteosat user for sometime and is familiar with David Taylor’s
MSG software. He should be able toshare his experiences with newcomers
to this branch of the hobby.
• Tel: (01244) 818252• e-mail: gw3atz@btopenworld.com
www.geo-web.org.uk

Submission of Copy

geoeditor@geo-web.org.uk
Particularly large attachments (8 MB
and above) can be transmitted via
Hightail
https://wwwhightail.com/

March/April 2016

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GEO Quarterly No 49

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The Group for Earth Observation

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March/April 2016