Group for Earth Observation

No 59 - September 2018

Peter Kinghorn sent in this Sentinel 3A image depicting Typhoon Jebi as it approached Japan on September 3, 2018 the dayprior to making landfall. Jebi developed into the most severe typhoon to hit Japan for quarter of a century.
Image © EUMETSAT (2018)

Proposed Visit to Damstadt 2019
Francis Bell

Useful User Groups
Weather Satellite Reports

Our last newsletter contained an article about GEO’s
previous visits to EUMETSAT’s HQ in Darmstadt together
with visits to ESOC and the space communication centre
at Usingen.

This group provided weekly reports, updates and news on
the operational aspects of weather satellites.
https://groups.io/g/weather-satellite-reports

For no specific reason these visits have been on a four
yearly cycle and if this is to be continued another GEO visit
to Darmstadt in 2019 seems appropriate.

SatSignal

Although no specific arrangements to visit Darmstadt havebeen made, readers of our last newsletter were invited toregister their interest in a possible Darmstadt visit in 2019.
The result so far is that a small number of GEO members
have registered their interest for a visit. I can understandthis because of the lack of a definitive date for the visit.
In order to remove any uncertainty I will contact ourpotential host organisations and try to establish a programof visits with specific time and dates. As soon as I havethis information I will email those who have registered
their interest and publish the details in our December
GEO newsletter.
There should be no charges for these visits but
individuals will be responsible for their own travel andaccommodation.
My thanks to those individuals who have already registeredwith me and I will keep in touch as necessary.
GEO MANAGEMENT TEAM
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 Newsletter Editor
Les Hamilton,
email: geoeditor@geo-web.org.uk

This end-user self help group is for users of David Taylor’s
Satellite Software Tools, including the orbit predictor
WXtrack, the file decoders GeoSatSignal and SatSignal,
the HRPT Reader program, the remapper GroundMap,
and the manager programs - MSG Data Manager, GOESABI Manager, AVHRR Manager etc.
https://groups.io/g/SatSignal
MSG-1
This forum provides a dedicated area for sharing
information about hardware and software for receiving andprocessing EUMETCast data.
https://groups.io/g/MSG-1
GEO-Subscribers
This is the official group is for subscribers of the Group for
Earth Observation (GEO), aimed at enthusiasts wishing
to exchange information relating to either GEO or Earth
Observation satellites.
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/
GEO-Subscribers/info

New Russian Meteor Launch
possible in December
Thanks to Douglas Deans for informing us that Russia’s
follow‑up Meteor weather satellite, Meteor M‑N2-2, isprovisionally set for launch on December 6 2018. This will
replace the ill-fated Meteor M‑N2-1 lost at launch last year.
It is to be hoped that lessons will have been learned fromthat fiasco (see report in GEOQ57, page 8), and that thelaunch will provide us with much needed ‘new’ AHRPT and
LRPT transmissions.

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
Management TeamDavid Anderson Rob Denton
Clive Finnis
Carol FinnisPeter GreenDavid Taylor

2

New URL for Meteor
LRPTOfflineDecoder
For some months now Oleg Bekrenev’s former‘Meteor.Robonuka.ru’ website has been unavailable.
It transpires that this website, which offers downloads ofthe popular LRPTOfflineDecoder software needed tocreate images from transmissions by Russia’s Meteor M
satellites, has this new URL

http://meteor.robanukah.club/www.geo-web.org.uk

Contents
Proposed Darmstadt Visit
Francis Bell
Useful User Groups		
Quarterly Question
Francis BellWhen Land Ice meets Sea Ice
NASA Earth Observatory
Heatwave Turns Europe Brown
NASA Earth Observatory
Rare Fair Skies over all UK and IrelandNASA Earth Observatory
GEO Outreach (Farncombe)
Francis Bell
Eruption Plume on Java		
Palk Strait
MODIS Web
Restless Kilauea
European Space Agency
County Fire lights up the Night
NASA Earth Observatory
Receiving Images from Feng Yun 3A
Les Hamlton
Shark Bay, Australia
MODIS Web

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2
4
6
7
9
10
11
13
14
15
16
18

Current Satellite Data		

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As ever, we are always pleased to receive contributions fromreaders, be they articles or just interesting satellite images.
These should continue to be sent to the Editor at
geoeditor@geo-web.org.uk

New Website for WXtoImg
Les Hamilton

provided in 2017, but these did not work. Matters
finally came to a head this summer when, some time
between mid May and mid June, all pages of the
WXtoImg website were erased.

For somewhat more than two years now, the
WXtoImg website has no longer allowed registrationof the software while its author has remained firmly
incommunicado. This has understandably caused
great inconvenience to prospective users who wished
to upgrade to the Professional Edition with its
advanced features.

But the good news is that enthusiast Kevin
Schuchmann has built a clone of the WXtoImg
website called WXtoImg Restored, which permits
downloads of the software, and also provides Kevin’s
Professional Edition Upgrade Key, which will allow
access to all the program features.

In 2016, the website offered free upgrade keys, butthese expired after 12 months. A new set of keys washttps://wxtoimgrestored.xyz/

You can visit this website at the following URL

www.geo-web.org.uk

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Francis Bell
Question 58 (June)My thanks to the interested people who provided
me with a response to Quarterly Question 58,
which related to the two satellite images shownas part of the question. The question related tothose islands on Earth which are divided into morethan one country. The two example images shown
were of Cyprus, located at the eastern end of theMediterranean Sea and Ireland which is located justof the west coast of Great Britain. Cyprus, although
it is disputed, is divided into two countries Cyprus
and North Cyprus, although to this day the border
between them is contentious and is still monitored
by a United Nations peace keeping force; it’s just a
few years since I was there! Ireland is divided into
the Republic of Ireland (the south) and Northern
Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom.
The question also invited a response to name otherislands in the world which are split between different
countries. My initial list of such island which may
well be incomplete is as follows:

1 Ireland which is split between the Irish Republicin the south and the United Kingdom, with about aquarter of the total area located in the north.

2 Cyprus split between Cyprus and North Cyprus.
3 Hispaniola (a large Island in the Caribbean) whichis split between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
4 The island of St Martin. This is a very small
island in the Caribbean which is almost equally
spilt between French and Dutch rule. It may bedescribed as the ‘Collectively of St. Martin’ or
perhaps St Maarten.
5 Borneo split three ways between Malaysia,
Indonesia and the Nation of Brunei.
6 Timor located at the extreme eastern endof Indonesia is split between Indonesia andindependent East Timor. A satellite image of Timoris shown in Figure 1.
7 Tierra del Fuego. This island is at the southern tip
of South America and is split between Argentina
and Chile.
8 New Guinea. This large island north of Australia issplit between Papua New Guinea and Papua.
I’m sure there must be other islands split between
countries, so if you know of any others it’s not toolate to add to the above list. I complied the above
list because over the years my wife and I havevisited all the islands in question except Timor andFigure 1 - This is a satellite view of the island of Timor, which is approximately 500 kilometres in length.
Image: Jeff Schmaltz
MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC

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www.geo-web.org.uk

continued overleaf

Figure 2 - This is view of the summit of an active European volcano but the fires shown are not directly related tovolcanism but the local dry conditions which have allowed burning of local scrub and woodland.

New Guinea, although in some cases it was a rather brief
visit. If you can add further islands to the above list please letme know via email. There is no particular deadline for yourcontribution.
Quarterly Question 59
This question relates to two images of European volcanoes
which have been in the news recently although not always
for the same reason. Figure 2 shows the summit of a volcano
surrounded by fires, although the fires were not directly related
to volcanism but more the very dry local conditions and thesurface burning of scrub and woodland. Figure 3 show anactive volcano with a plume of smoke which is located on thecorner of a well populated island which has a characteristic
triangular coastal outline.
There is another active volcano in the same country as thethose already mentioned which has been in the news recently
because of its eruptions. This third volcano lies close to astraight line between the other two volcanoes.
The question is: “What are the names of the three volcanoes?”
Answers by email tofrancis@geo-web.org.uk
by the deadline copy date for the next GEO Newsletter which isNovember 30, 2018.

www.geo-web.org.uk

Figure 3 - This is a view of an active volcano on a
Mediterranean island showing a plume of smoke being
vented from the summit of the volcano.

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When Land Ice Meets Sea Ice
NASA Earth Observatory
On April 21, 2018, pilots guided NASA’s P-3 research
aircraft over glaciers along Greenland’s eastern
coast, with walls of ice-carved fjords rising on eachside. The flight, to map land ice along the Geikie
Peninsula, was part of Operation IceBridge—NASA’s
long-running airborne mission to monitor polar ice.
But the view suddenly changes where the glaciersreach the sea. As the plane looped around foranother run up one of eight glaciers targeted for thisday, an iceberg caught the eye of Linette Boisvert,
a sea ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight
Center. She took a photograph (figure 1) from analtitude of 500 meters above Scoresby Sound while
flying west toward Vestfjord Glacier.

That’s not too hard to do: it was first-year sea ice,and therefore thin, flat, and easily broken. Areas ofopen water between the fractured sea ice had alreadybegun to refreeze. Other small bergs, possibly thosethat had broken off from the main berg and caused
the broken up pattern, are drifting around in themix. Such a mixture of sea ice and iceberg pieces iscalled mélange—a French word that means ‘mixture’.
“This iceberg was in an area during our flight that
we termed ‘polar bear highways’ because there
were so many polar bear tracks on the surface ofthe sea ice and snow, looping around icebergs andlinking one iceberg to another,” Boisvert said. “These
openings in the ice are ideal places for seals to comeout of the water and rest and for polar bears tohunt. Although there were no visible tracks aroundthis iceberg, it might be visited by polar bears as it
makes it way to out to the Atlantic Ocean.”On April 27, Boisvert snapped another photographof icebergs encased in broken sea ice (figure 2). This
photograph showcases all ice types in the fjord of theKangerdlugssuaq Glacier, as well as the glacier front(top-right). Notice the pond of meltwater atop theiceberg in the center of the image.

Figure 1 - A semicircle of fractured sea ice surrounding an iceberg.
Image: NASA / Linette Boisvert

Icebergs start as land ice—snow that has
accumulated on land and, over the course of many
years, has been compacted into ice.
When this glacial ice flows downstream
and reaches the sea, cracks in the ice arewidened as warm water and air melt itfrom below and above, respectively. Whenthese cracks become large enough, pieces
break off like fingernail clippings anddrift into the water as icebergs. Boisvert’s
berg was trapped in sea ice—the frozen
seawater that floats around on the ocean.
While the sea ice looks as though it
would prevent this berg from moving,it was not completely motionless.
According to Boisvert, the patterns in
the fractured sea ice were probably
caused by the iceberg rotating or by partof it breaking off. If part of the iceberg
broke off, it would fall into the sea ice,
the impact causing the ice to break up
in a semicircular pattern on one side;somewhat like ripples in a pond when astone is thrown into it.

6“These images capture the complexity in which land
ice and sea ice interact in the Arctic climate system,”Boisvert said. “Studying these interactions is very
important for understanding changes in some glaciertermini and outflow, and sea ice thickness andcompaction in the context of climate change...thus
reminding us that all ice types matter.”Figure 2 - Icebergs encased in broken sea ice.
Image: NASA / Linette Boisvert

www.geo-web.org.uk

Heatwave Turns Europe Brown
NASA Earth Observatory

A persistent summer heatwave lingered over parts ofEurope this year, setting record high temperatures andturning typically green landscapes to brown as the drought
intensified.
The lower image on page 8 shows browning in northcentral Europe on July 24, 2018, while for comparison,
the upper image shows the same area one year ago. Bothimages were acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite.
According to the European Space Agency, these regions
turned brown in just a month, during which several
countries experienced record high temperatures and low
precipitation.

http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Videos/
2018/07/From_green_to_brown_in_a_month
Much of Germany experienced continuous drought
conditions since May while the United Kingdom
experienced its driest first half of summer (June 1 to July16) on record.
The image pair opposite shows the burned landscapeof the United Kingdom on July 15, 2018, compared with
July 17, 2017. Both images were acquired by the Visible
Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi
NPP satellite.

have varied in June over the past 50 years, using historicaltemperature data from the NASA Goddard Institute forSpace Studies. The data showed a steep, persistent
warming trend over the decades, with extreme heatwaves
becoming more common.
“If the globe continues to warm, it’s clear we willcontinue to see events like this increasing infrequency, severity, and duration,” said Gibson, whorecently published a study linking global temperatures
to regional heatwaves. “We found that parts of Europe
and North America could experience an extra 10 to 15
heatwave days per degree of global warming beyond
what we have seen already.”
Gibson said this particular heatwave has been boosted byan unusual positioning and persistence of the jet stream
which, since May, had been stationed unusually far north,particularly over Europe, and in a wavy pattern like theuppercase Greek letter omega. The upper level wind
pattern trapped an area of high pressure over the United
Kingdom that has mostly been windless, cloudless, andvery hot.
“Scientists are still working out the details of how
climate change might be influencing the jet stream. But
we already know the background state of the climate
has warmed by about 1°C, indicating some human
influence on this event,” stated Gibson.

Peter Gibson, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, examined how global temperatures

NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using VIIRS datafrom the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership and MODIS data fromLANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response. Story by Kasha Patel.

England, on July 17, 2017

England, on July 15, 2018www.geo-web.org.uk

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All Europe suffered in this summer’s heatwave, so much so that the land, normally green, turned brown with drought. These
two images from NASA illustrate the changes for Denmark: upper image from July 2017, the lower one for July 2018.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using VIIRS data from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnershipand MODIS data from LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response88

www.geo-web.org.uk

Rare Fair Skies Over All of the UK and Ireland
One of the cloudier places on Earth was bathed in clear sunshine for a day

NASA Earth Observatory
Islands tend to have a lot of cloud cover, thanks to
the moisture all around them. Landmasses in middle
latitudes also tend to be cloudier than other parts ofthe planet. And the intersections between different
atmospheric circulation patterns can lead to a lot ofcloud cover.
The United Kingdom and Ireland fit all of thosecategories, and they are among the cloudiest places
on Earth. Air masses from the Arctic, southernand northern Europe, the Maritimes, and the Gulf
Stream all come crashing together in this region. Yetin late June 2018, England, Ireland, Scotland, andWales all bathed in a rare day of cloud-free skies.

Figure 2 - A cloudiness probability map

cloud-cover data collected on every June 27 between
2000 and 2017. Areas where the sensors observed
clear skies most often are shown with dark blue;
areas where the sensors observed the most clouds
on June 27 are white.

Figure 1 - This composite image using data from both NASA’s Aqua andSuomi-NPP satellites, shows the UK and Ireland totally cloud-free.

On June 27, 2018, satellites captured the data forthe natural colour image shown in figure 1. It is
a composite of scenes acquired by the Moderate
Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on
NASA’s Aqua satellite and by the Visible Infrared
Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP
satellite. While the islands on that day werecloudless, the seas around them were blanketed by
lumpy marine stratocumulus clouds. Note, too, thephytoplankton bloom in the North Sea.

Figure 3 - Smoke from the wildfire on Saddleworth Moor

According to a 2012 study based on MODIS data, theprobability of cloud-free skies on any given day over
Great Britain is 21.3%, with a maximum probabilityof 33.3% in November and 12.9% in March. Overall,about 67% of the Earth is bathed in clouds on
any given day, with just 10% of the ocean being
completely cloud-free.

The one blemish on the image above is the thicksmoke from the Saddleworth Moor fire near
Stalybridge, England. Fires spread across nearlyseven square miles of moorland. The Operational
Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired a naturalcolour image of the blazes around midday on
June 27 (figure 3).

This map in figure 2 was developed using
observations made by the MODIS instruments on
both the Terra and Aqua satellites. It is based on

NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using VIIRS and
MODIS data from LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response and the Level 1 andAtmospheres Active Distribution System (LAADS) and Land Atmosphere
Near real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE), and Landsat data from the
U.S. Geological Survey.

www.geo-web.org.uk

9Francis Bell

Visitors to the Space Link event who are almost ready for one of the presentation.
GEO’s stand is just visible in the back left hand corner of the room.
The ‘Space Link Foundation’ is an organisation
which has been running for about 20 years with
its objective of bringing space education andspace science into schools. In addition to visiting
schools directly with information, demonstrations
and sometimes live satellite reception, there is anannual meeting for any interested school. This
one-day meeting is held at a school in Farncombe,
Surrey where distinguished guests present various
space topics to visiting schools. Over the years GEO
has contributed to all of these meetings and did so
again in June 2018 with our demonstration stand,providing appropriate information emphasising
how individuals or schools can receive their own
satellite data or access interesting information via
the Internet. The attached photographs indicate thescale and quality of this year’s meeting.
If any reader wants more information about theSpace Link Foundation I suggest they visit theirwebsite at www. spacelink.org, and if you aresupportive of any local school you may wish to invite
Space Link to visit the school in question.

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Dr. Helen Sharman, the first Briton in space talking to avisitor just before her presentation to the audience. Robert
Coombes a director of Space Link and an active memberof GEO is shown in the background. When Helen was on
the MIR space station I was the first amateur to talk to
her over the radio and we have subsequently remained incontact and I hope friends.

www.geo-web.org.uk

A young and very interested visitor to the Space Link event. Previously I had a long conversation with her while she was visiting
our GEO stand and her sincere interest in our activities can be demonstrated by the publication resting on her lap!

Eruption Plume on Java

This Sentinel-3 image was received by one of our readers as a EUMETCast HVS-1 transmision on
June 1, 2018 and shows this eruption plume from the Merapi volcano in Java very clearly.
Image © EUMETSAT 2018

Merapi, one of Indonesia’s 129 active volcanoes, is located about 28 kilometres north of Yogyakarta on Javacity, a citywith a population of 2.4 million. Additionally, thousands more live on the flanks of the volcano. Merapi has a historyof regular eruptions since 1948 and as recently as November 1994, a pyroclastic flow following an eruption killed 27
people. A major eruption in 2010 claimed 347 lives and displaced over three hundred thousand from their homes.

www.geo-web.org.uk

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On July 6, 2018, Enrico Gobbetti downloaded two successive Meteor M2 images, both perfect with no intrusion of the buffer overflow effect.
This is a section from the 07:28 UT pass, showing the east Mediterranean basking in hot sunshine.

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www.geo-web.org.uk

Palk Strait
MODIS WebThe waters of the Palk Strait separate Sri Lanka
from the tip of India. At the narrowest point, thePalk Strait measures about 53 kilometres in width.
A chain of islands and coral reefs stretch acrossthe southern end of the strait. Most often
called Adam’s Bridge, this feature is also called‘The Bridge of Rama’. Sacred to the Hindu religion,
the bridge was said to be built by Lord Rama, who
visited many towns in the region. The shoals areprimarily limestone and the waters in this location
are quite shallow—some data suggests the ‘bridge’
may be the remnants of a true land bridge thatonce stretched between India and Sri Lanka.
On July 23, 2018, NASA’s Aqua satellite passed

over the Palk Strait, allowing the Moderate
Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)
flying aboard it to acquire a true-colour image ofthe region.
Swirls of greens, milky-blue, and tan float in thewaters of the Palk Strait. These colours are most
likely created by a combination of sediment, whichflows into the Strait from several large rivers, andphytoplankton. Phytoplankton are microscopic
plant-like organisms that frequently flourish inthese waters and—in very large numbers—can beeasily seen from space.
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit: Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Land Rapid
Response Team, NASA GSFC

https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/showall.php
www.geo-web.org.uk

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Restless Kilauea
European Space Agency
Fiery lava continues to pour from the Kilauea
volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island. These Copernicus
Sentinel-2 images from May 23, June 7 andJune 12, 2018 show the relentless flow of lava andclouds of ash.
The eruption, which began in early May, has
destroyed more than 600 homes, spread lava overmore than 800 hectares of land and opened up
at least 22 fissures in the ground, according to
Hawaii County Mayor Harry Kim.
Although this eruption has produced slow-moving
lava, which has allowed people to evacuate, it isreported to be the most destructive eruption in the
US since that of Mount St Helen’s in 1980.
While the Sentinel-2 mission mainly provides
information for agricultural and forestry
practices, and to map changes in land cover,its images of disasters such as volcanic
eruptions can be used to help assess damage.

Copyright: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2018),
processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

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County Fire Lights Up the Night
NASA Earth Observatory
Light from the County
Fire illuminated thenight skies of northern
California when theSuomi NPP satelliteacquired the upper image
opposite overnight on
July 1, 2018. With plentyof light from a nearly fullMoon, the smoke waseven visible streaming
southwest toward San
Francisco Bay and thePacific Ocean.
The fire had started
the day before andburned a few thousands
acres near the ruralcommunity of Guinda,
but it quadrupled insize overnight as strong
winds fanned the flamesin hot, dry weather. By
the afternoon of July 2,
the blaze—just three
percent contained—
had charred more than
18,000 hectares andforced hundreds ofpeople to evacuate thearea.
The Moderate
Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer(MODIS) on NASA’s
Aqua satellite captured anatural-colour image ofthe fire on the afternoon
of July 1. Thick smoke
streamed southwest
toward San Francisco
Bay, where many people
woke up to unusuallydark skies and peculiar
views of orange clouds
and fog. Significant
amounts of smoke
appeared to be drifting
above the cloud layer.
Roughly 1,200 fire
personnel were trying
to control the fire. They
had 119 fire engines andThis is an overnight image acquired on July 1 by the Suomi NPP satellite’s “Day/Night band”.

This is an afternoon MODIS image acquired on July 1 by the Aqua satellite.

12 helicopters at theirdisposal, according to
California Department
of Forestry and Fire
Protection.
The night-time image
was acquired withthe ‘day night band’of the Visible Infrared
Imaging Radiometer
Suite (VIIRS). VIIRS
detects light in arange of wavelengths
from green to nearinfrared and uses
filtering techniques toobserve signals such

www.geo-web.org.uk

as city lights, auroras,
and wildfires.
NASA Earth Observatory
images by Joshua Stevens,using MODIS data fromLANCE/EOSDIS Rapid
Response and Suomi NPPVIIRS data from NOAA’s
National Centers forEnvironmental Information(NCEI). Story by Adam Voiland

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Receiving Images from Feng Yun 3A
Les Hamilton
Soon after GEO Newsletter 58 was published, I was
taken to task by one of our Dutch readers, Peter
Kooistra, who has been regularly receiving highresolution Feng Yun 3A AHRPT images directlyfrom the satellite. Peter noted that this satellite
was stated to be ‘inactive’ in our listing of Currently
Active Satellites, yet he was regularly receiving
strong signals from it.
I contacted Douglas Deans, who no longer lists
FY-3A in weekly Satellite Status, and he conformedthat the satellite is considered by both China andthe WMO to have reached the end of its life andthat its official status is indeed ‘inactive’ as ofJanuary 2015. You can read the official information
at this URL

https://www.wmo-sat.info/oscar/satellites/view/113
According to ESA’s eoPortal News, FY-3A was
retired on January 5, 2015, ending the global
image coverage service. Several of FY-3A’s mission
instruments had by then failed:
MWRI failed soon after launch
IRAS failed in October 2008 (inactive);
SBUS failed in December 2008 (inactive);
ERM-1 failed in May 2008 (inactive);
MWTS-1 failed in December 2012 (inactive).
So, although officially retired, it seems that the
AHRPT imaging is still active, for whatever reason.
Below are some of Peter’s images, which are all
the more remarkable because he hand tracks his
antenna during the satellite pass.

This RGB FY-3A image dates from 07:33 UT on June 7, 201816www.geo-web.org.uk

Peter Kooistra also receives images from FY-3C. This one, from 07:33 UT, July 1, 2018 is an RGB197 image,coloured using two IR and one near IR channels. This gives more realistic land colours, though at the expense ofsomewhat reduced sharpness, to depict western Europe at the height of the summer heatwave.

www.geo-web.org.uk

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Shark Bay, Australia
MODIS-WebThis MODIS image of Shark Bay, Western Australia, was acquired on July 10, 2018 by NASA’s Aqua satellite.

Swirls of bright blue in the waters of Shark Bay,
Australia point to the presence of phytoplankton in
the water. These plant-like microscopic organisms
exist in the waters year-round, but reproduce inlarge numbers when nutrients, daylight length, andwater temperatures are favourable. At such times,
the algal blooms become so large that they caneasily be seen from space.
Like terrestrial plants, phytoplankton play animportant role in the carbon cycle by using
photosynthesis to consume carbon dioxide
and release oxygen. In addition, carbon can besequestered in the ocean bottoms as the organisms
dies. Phytoplankton also form the base of themarine food web, feeding everything from themicroscopic, animal-like zooplankton to multiton whales. Smaller fish and invertebrates alsograze on phytoplankton, and those organisms inturn feed other fish, mammals, birds—and evenhumans.

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Shark Bay has been designated as a UNESCOWorld Heritage Site, notable for its luxuriant bedsof sea-grass, for providing a home to the dugong(sea cow), and for its rich biodiversity.
Not only phytoplankton exist in these waters: so
do other plant-like features: stromatolites. These
are large colonies of algae which form hard,dome-shaped deposits. According to the UNESCO
description, these stromatolites are among theoldest forms of life on Earth. Shark Bay is also
home to five endangered species of mammals.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua
satellite acquired this true-colour image of Shark
Bay, Australia on July 10, 2018, by combining
bands 1,4 and 3.
Image Credit: Jeff Schmaltz,
MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC

www.geo-web.org.uk

www.geo-web.org.uk

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This Meteor M2 image acquired at 10:14 UT on September 6, 2018 depicts Scotland in the embrace of a depression that brought a mixtureof sunny spells and heavy showers of rain and hail. The image was captured by Les Hamilton using a USB dongle with SDRsharp
followed by image processing in LRPTOfflineDecoder and SmoothMeteor.

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