Group for Earth Observation

No 67 - September 2020

As wildfires rage across northern California, enormous smoke plumes are smothering cities and towns in the San
Joaquin Valley and San Francisco Bay area. On August 19, 2020, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer(MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image just before noon.
Image © NASA Worldview SnapshotsUseful User Groups

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Weather Satellite Reports

Francis Bell,

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on the operational aspects of weather satellites.

Coturnix House, Rake Lane,
Milford, Godalming, Surrey GU8 5AB,
England.
Tel:

01483 416 897

email: francis@geo-web.org.uk

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Taylor’s Satellite Software Tools, including the orbit
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Management TeamDavid Anderson
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2

Les HamiltonAs if the world did not have enough troubles with the Covid-19
pandemic, record forest ﬁres in California and Siberia, ahighly active Atlantic hurricane season with a record 13 tropicalstorms developing before the start of September, drought inBrazil and record melting in the Arctic have all hit the headlines
this past quarter. Several of the articles in this issue relate tothese events

Ed Murashie highlights California’s Lightning Siege ﬁre, andexplains how satellite data can be used to track the incidenceof wildﬁres. Ed has also promised a follow-up article for the
December issue in which he will describe his receiving station.

We also have a follow-up article from Neil Lonie describing
progress in setting up the new Dundee Satellite Station
at Errol Airﬁeld. The project has already raised over £17,000 on
their GoFundMe page athttps://www.gofundme.com/f/dundee-satellite-receiving-station

Many GEO Newsletter readers have already contributed to thisventure, but more funds are still required to guarantee theproject comes to fulﬁllment.
You can keep in touch with progress on the DSS Team’s Twitter
feed at@DundeeSat

Contents
GEO Report and Quarterly Question
California on Fire
Iceberg A68A
Cloud changes in busy Ship Corridors
Dundee Satellite Groundstation
The parched Paraná river
Mackenzie Bay
Heat and Fire scorch Siberia
Ice Arch in the Nares Strait
Great Salt Lake, Utah
Lake Skadar, Montenegro and Albania
A Sandy Flower in the Pacific
Satellite Status

Francis Bell
Ed Murashie
European Space Agency
NASA Earth Observatory
Neil Lonie
NASA Earth Observatory
MODIS Image of the Day
NASA Earth Observatory
NASA Earth Observatory
European Space Agency
NASA Earth Observatory
NASA Earth Observatory

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6
7
8
10
12
16
17
19
20
22
23
25

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Francis Bell

Because of the ongoing pandemic of Covid-19 virus,
there have, quite understandably, been no meetings
involving GEO. I am particularly disappointed that,for a second time, our planned visit to Darmstadt
had to be cancelled. Who know what next year will
have to offer?
However, an important event since the previous
publication of our Quarterly Newsletter has been theretirement of Alan Banks as our webmaster. It was
many years ago that Alan took over the managementof our website and without a doubt transformed it to
its present day slick informative easy to use format.
Our website is important as a high profile point ofcontact, not just for GEO members, but for anyone
scanning the Internet. Alan has retired to give
himself more time for his increasing personal andfamily commitments. I wish to record our sincere
thanks to Alan and I hope he remains in contact
with GEO during the years to come.
A New Webmaster
This is a specific request to anyone with thenecessary technical skills and commitment to GEO
to consider taking over the roll of webmaster for us.
Please consider this invitation and, if you are in any
way willing to contribute to this webmaster rôle, thenget in touch with me or some other member of the
GEO Management Team as soon as is reasonably
possible. Over to you.
Accounts
There has been little change in our accounts since
the last Newsletter. We have approximately £8,390
in the bank, with any stock or old equipment we may
own have been written off in value. Currently one
outgoing we have is the £16 monthly charge for theWebsite which, incidentally, I think needs analysis
because it seems too much to pay. The other regularcost we face is £13 a year for Company House
renewal.
The Dundee Satellite Project
Regular readers may remember the brief reports
we have published relating to the long establishedsatellite project based at Dundee University.
Unfortunately this project had its government
funding withdrawn about a year ago but the team at
Dundee decided to independently run the project at
Errol, just a few miles from the university site. GEO,
being supportive of earth observation contributed

some funds to the new project, hence our interest in
following its progress.
I understand that, over the past few months, andin spite of one of the team contracting the Covid-19
virus, progress has been made in establishingworking equipment at the new Errol site and indue course we hope to see some of the images theyreceive. GEO certainly wishes success to the newreceiving station and congratulates the team involvedin this project.

Quarterly Question 66
My thanks to those members who submitted their answers
to the last Quarterly Question. The question related to thatpoint on the Earth’s surface which is furthest distant fromany land. This point is known as Point Nemo (perhaps
with other names) and is of particular interest to the spaceindustry because it represents an area of the planet’s
surface where space debris can be dumped in the sea witha reduced chance of hitting land causing local damage if
the re-entry is not perfectly positioned.
The approximate position of Point Nemo is 48°S, 123°W,
or in more general terms it is located in the south Pacificapproximately midway between Easter Island and New
Zealand. For more information about Point Nemo you
could try looking it up on Wikipedia, which is what I did.
The name Nemo comes from the Latin and translates as‘No One’.
Quarterly Question 67
I was drawn to this question by a very recently publishedimage by ESA which shows an island which is cloud free(figure 1, next page). I have seen images of this island
before but never completely cloud free. The Quarterly
Question is very straightforward: “Name the island shownin the satellite image”.
Because I think the question might be easy I am notgiving any clues relating to the scale of the image or its
approximate location. However, below is some brief text,
which I have edited, which was attached to the publishedimage. This gives a few reference names if your needthem.

www.geo-web.org.uk

4Here is the text whichaccompanied the image shownin figure 1.
“The white, circular patchin the centre of the countryis Hofsjökull, the country’s
third largest glacier and its
largest active volcano. The
elongated white area westof Hofsjökull is Langjökull,
the island’s second largest
ice cap.
“The capital and largest cityof the island, is located on
the Seltjarnarnes Peninsula,in southwest of the island.
In the top-left of the image,several sea ice swirls canbe seen off the coast of a
local land mass.”
Part Two
This part of the Quarterly
question is not connected inany way with space or satellite
imaging but relates more topolitical strategy and national
defence.
The country of Costa Rica islocated in Central America withcoastlines on the Caribbean
and the Pacific Ocean: I have
had the good fortune to visit
Costa Rica, which is perhaps
why I know about this rather
obscure aspect of their current
national policy. I have notchecked in fine detail but
I think Costa Rica and theisland shown in figure 1 haveapproximately the same surface
area.

Figure 1
Can you identify this cloud-free island?
Image © ESA

The second part to thisQuarterly Question is: “Whatrather unusual national defence
strategy do these two countries
have in common?”Just for interest, a BlueMarble
satellite image of Costa Rica isshown in Figure 2.
Please send you two answers
to Francis Bell at the email
address
francis@francisbell.com

by November 28, 2020.

Figure 2
Costa Rica
Public domain satellite imagery taken by screenshot fromNASA World Wind software / Wikimedia

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California on Fire
Ed Murashie

August Lightning Siege of 2020 [1] isthe ominous name that CAL Fire has
given this August’s unprecedented
number of fires in California. CAL
Fire is the nickname given to The
Department of Forestry and Fire
Protection that protects over 32 million
acres of California’s privately-owned
wildlands and also provides services
in 36 of the State’s counties.
Much of it started on August 17, whenover 10,000 lightning strikes wererecorded in a 72 hour period over
Northern California, igniting hundredsof fires burning over a million acres.
But that is just part of the story
because there have been other fires
up and down the state that werestarted by human actions ranging fromcar accidents to being intentionallyset. The worst high pressure domein ten years over Arizona started along heatwave lasting weeks withmany temperature records being set.
In Southern California we had rolling
blackouts that we had not seen in
nineteen years. The high pressure
was in the perfect location to pump up
moisture from Mexico and Hurricane
Elida which traveled up the coastof Baja. This combination of heatand moisture was the perfect recipe
for thunderstorms and lightning inSouthern California.
One of the best sources to track thefires besides the news channels are
the Geostationary GOES-17 (GOESEAST) and polar satellites; eachhave their own advantages. The
geostationary satellite’s advantage
is being able to animate its imagery
and the GOES Re-Broadcast(GRB) transmission provides thebest geostationary resolution to doso. Sixteen wavelengths [2] in fulldisk, CONUS (Continental UnitedStates) and mesoscale formats areavailable. Mesoscale images, likethe one reproduced above, are small
sections of a CONUS image thatscientists/forecasters use to study
local phenomena because they aretransmitted every minute as opposed
to CONUS every five minutes and fulldisk every ten minutes.
Lately NOAA has been using one oftwo mesoscale channels, channel‑2,
to image the State of California andthe wildfires. Combining imager
channels 1-3 makes for a false color
image during the day and channel‑7
thermal infrared provides the bestnighttime imagery with black dots
representing each fire.
A 1080 line MP4 animation createdon Aug 21 between 8:30 am and10:30 pm can be viewed online [3]. The
images were received from GOES-17,
on the author’s GRB station using a
2 meter dish, and the animation was
created using IrfanView, Microsoft
Photos and Shotcut video editor.
IrfanView batch processing wasused to scale the 2000 pixel by2000 line false color images and the
500 pixel by 500 line infrared images

to create 1920 pixel by 1080 line
images. These were sharpened andthe contrast and brightness were
optimized. Next the images were
loaded into Photos, the transition
delay of each image was set to 0.05
seconds and the MP4 created. Finallythe video was loaded into Shotcut to
add the transition from day to night
and the video was speeded up 1.5
times to shorten play time.
Because of the reduced channel‑7
GRB resolution of 4 km, polar satellite
HRPT transmissions can offer better
thermal infrared image resolution up
to 1.1 km. Channel‑3 from the Metopand NOAA satellites provide thebest wavelengths for fire detection.
A Metop‑C pass was received on
August 21 and the channel‑3 image
can be found at the same website as
the animation. It was received on theauthor’s station using a 39” modified
WiFi dish, AirSpy Mini Software
Defined Radio (SDR) and UHFSatcom’s xHRPT program. More on
the station in a future article.

References
1. https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/
2. https://www.goes-r.gov/mission/ABI-bands-quick-info.html
3. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1mn41avpdiskljf/AAAK1h5Z565c6V6P0M5KZyala?dl=0

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Iceberg A68A
European Space Agency

A huge iceberg called A68 calved from the Antarctic Peninsula’s Larsen C ice shelf on 12 July 2017.
This image, which was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission, shows its position on 9 February 2020.
The berg is now known as A-68A after losing two chunks of ice: A-68B and A-68C. Antarctic icebergs are named from the Antarctic
quadrant in which they were originally sighted, then a sequential number, then, if the iceberg breaks, a sequential letter.
Image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

www.geo-web.org.uk

77Cloud Changes in Busy Ship Corridors
NASA Earth Observatory
Story by Kasha Patel

Ship tracks over the south Atlantic Ocean on January 18, 2018, observed by NASA’s Aqua satellite
MODIS image by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response.

As ships cruise across the ocean, they emit a large
number of small airborne particles—aerosols—into
the lower atmosphere. Under the right conditions,these exhaust particles cause long, thin cloud
patterns referred to as ‘ship tracks’. For decades,scientists have theorised that these cloud changes
might alter climate by affecting the quantity ofsunlight reaching Earth’s surface.
Now, for the first time, researchers have measured
exactly how ship emissions affect clouds at aregional scale. University of Washington scientist
Michael Diamond and colleagues examined
more than a decade of cloud patterns over abusy shipping lane in the southeast Atlantic thatconnects Europe to southern Africa and Asia.
The team measured the cloud properties inside theshipping corridor using satellite data and comparedthem to what they estimated the values would
be without shipping activity. The scientists foundthat the shipping activity increased the number ofcloud droplets over the shipping lane. They further
showed that those clouds prevented about 2 wattsof solar energy from reaching each square metre ofocean surface along the shipping lane. The team’s

results agreed with previous computer modellingstudies that predicted a sizeable cooling effect due
to shipping.
“If you look at a satellite image of a hightraffic shipping area, when the weather
conditions are right, you can clearly see
bright lines of clouds right along where those
ships are travelling and emitting aerosols,”
stated Diamond, an atmospheric scientist.
”Ship tracks are a prime example of how tiny
particles of pollution in the atmosphere can
influence cloud properties. The clearly visible
ship tracks are only the tip of the iceberg,
however, so our study looked at how shipping
could affect cloud properties on average overa long time period.“
The natural-colour image above shows an exampleof ship tracks over the southeast Atlantic Ocean as
observed on January 18, 2018, by the Moderate
Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on
NASA’s Aqua satellite. The maps overleaf show theaverage cloud droplet concentrations from 2003
to 2015 during the cloudiest months for the region(September, October, and November).

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NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using data from Diamond, Michael, et al. (2020).

The map on the left shows the cloud droplet concentrations observed by MODIS on
NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites. The map on the right shows the expected cloud droplet
concentrations without shipping activity. The expected values were calculated based on
statistical patterns from nearby, unpolluted areas. The team then calculated the difference inthe amount of sunlight reflected back into space between the two scenarios. The team useddata from NASA’s Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) instruments, whichmonitor the solar energy reflected by Earth and the heat energy emitted by the planet.
Diamond explained that the aerosols from the ships create ‘seeds’ in the atmospherethat water vapour can latch on to and condense into small cloud droplets. These smaller
droplets make clouds brighter so that they reflect more sunlight, which creates a local
cooling effect at the planet’s surface.
That change is small on a regional scale, but it could be enough to affect global temperatures if
the same phenomenon occurs worldwide, according to study co-author Hannah Director of the
University of Washington. When the team scaled their findings across the planet, they foundthat changes in low-lying clouds from all industrial pollution sources could block about one wattof energy per square meter globally. For context, greenhouse gases from industrial activities
have trapped roughly 3 watts per square meter so far.
“Cloud changes caused by industrial pollution have produced a global cooling effect thatis about one-third as strong as the warming from increased greenhouse gases,” said
Diamond.
Diamond explains that even though these ship emissions have a short-term cooling effect, theycreate other issues. Pollutants from ship exhaust have detrimental effects on human health,while also adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
The algorithms developed for this study could be applied to study other anthropogenic
sources of pollution around the world. “We can use a similar methodology to determine
the effects of other human sources of aerosols like power plants,” said Diamond. “We
could model the world with and without various human activities and better understand our
impact on Earth’s climate.”www.geo-web.org.uk

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Progress update for theDundee Satellite Station (DSS) Ltd Groundstation
Neil Lonie

Figure 1 - The current situation at the Errol groundstation

As reported in the March 2020 issue of GEO
Newsletter, following closure of the University of
Dundee Satellite Receiving Station in 2019 some ofits former staff rescued the antennas and equipment
which would otherwise have been disposed of. They
formed Dundee Satellite Station Ltd with the intention
to relocate the ground station to a new site where it
could operate on a commercial basis.
At the time of our March report, planning permission
had just been granted by Perth & Kinross Council toestablish the facility at the former RAF Errol Airfield,
approximately 8 miles west of Dundee, and the DSS
team was looking forward to starting construction of
the new station. Alas, COVID 19 and the resulting
lockdown intervened, forcing a delay of aroundthree months. However, the lockdown period was
not wasted as we were able to work on detailed site
designs plans, identify contractors to assist withconstruction and continue discussions with potential
customers, research partners and funders etc. An
anti-vandal modular building was also built to orderand installed at the airfield in late May to provide theon-site operations/maintenance room that will hostall antenna-related and other operational equipment.
On-site activities finally began in early June andso far have included complete electrical wiring of

the operations room with distribution board, surge
protection and circuits for equipment/UPS, airconditioning, internal/external 13 amp outlets,
lighting and security lighting etc. as well as IT
network cabling.
An underground power cable has been installed,
requiring excavation of a 100 metre long trench, todeliver a 100 amp 3-phase supply from the nearby
substation/industrial units. Cable routes (trunking
and trays) have been constructed for all internal
equipment and network cables, and for externalroutes to our first two antennas. The electricalinstallation also includes provision for adding agenerator later to allow automatic fail-over in theevent of mains supply interruptions. Temporarysite security fencing has been erected but will be
replaced by a permanent fence in due course, while amains water feed has also been installed.
A pair of concrete and structural steel beam bases
have been constructed with subsequent mountingof the first two tracking antenna pedestals on them.
Currently we are working through servicing andrefurbishing these antennas and anticipate thatthey will be ready for testing towards the end of
September with the aim of being available to support
the first customer before the year end.

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Figure 2 - The repainted and refurbished 3.7 metre antenna

The initial focus of the venture is providing
support for small‑satellite operations as this isessential for the station to be financially viable.
However, we also plan to test EO data reception
capability and publish sample images during thenext 2-3 months.

The Gofundme campaign to assist with set upof the Errol station is still active and has raisedover £17,000 so far, while the very generous
donation of GEO is also available towards the costof establishing EO data capabilities, for which weremain extremely grateful.

The intention is that EO data services andresearch project support will be part of regular
operations after the second phase of antenna
installations is complete, and data distribution
facilities such as a website have been established.
At present, these antennas are expected to beinstalled early in 2021.

Figure 1 (previous page) shows the current
situation with construction of the groundstation. Two antenna pedestals are in place, a
2.4 m antenna with reflector is already mounted(foreground) and a 3.7 m antenna pedestal justprior to its reflector being mounted is in the
backgroundwww.geo-web.org.uk

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The Parched Paraná River
NASA Earth Observatory
Story by Adam Voiland

A prolonged period of unusually warm
weather and drought in southern
Brazil, Paraguay, and northern
Argentina has dropped the ParanáRiver to its lowest water levels in
decades. The parched river basin has
hampered shipping and contributed to
an increase in fire activity in the delta
and floodplain.
On July 3, 2020, the Operational Land
Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured
figure 1, a false-colour image (bands
7-6-4) of the river near Rosario, a key
port city in Argentina. The combinationof shortwave infrared and visible lightmakes it easier to distinguish between
land and water. Water appears dark
blue or black. Figure 2 shows thesame area on July 1, 2019, on a day
when water levels were high across
many of the delta’s marshes, lagoons,islands, and meandering streams.
Data from the Argentine coastguard
shows that, on July 3, 2020, rivergauges near Rosario stood at one
metre higher than in May 2020,
when it dipped as low as 0.08 metre.
“While this low water level was theworst in the past 49 years, much
lower levels were frequent before the1970s,” explained Andrés Antico, aclimatologist with Argentina’s National
Scientific and Technical ResearchCouncil who is working on a project
to recover and preserve historical
records for the Paraná River. Thanks
to dams constructed in the 1970s in
the upper Paraná in southern Brazil,
water managers can usually prevent
low water levels by releasing waterfrom reservoirs during dry periods.
The drought has affected the region
since early 2020. The low water levels
have grounded several ships andmany vessels have had to reduce
their cargo in order to navigate
the river. With Rosario serving as
the distribution hub for much ofArgentina’s soy and other farmexports, low water levels have caused
hundreds of millions of dollars inlosses for the grain sector, according
to news reports.

Figure 1 - Landsat 8 image captured on July 3, 2020
Image: NASA

Figure 2 - Landsat 8 image captured on July 1, 2019
Image: NASA

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Figure 2

This natural-colour MODIS image, dating from July 14, 2020, is overlain with hotspots detected by NPP VIIRS.
Image: NASA

The low water levels on the Paraná River have coincidedwith increased fire activity within the delta. Remote sensing
scientists at the Universidad Nacional de San Martín havebeen tracking how many active fire detections the Visible
Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) and Moderate
Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite
sensors have made in recent months, finding that MODIS
had in 2020 detected more than 1,450 hotspots in the
Paraná River delta through July 22, more than any otheryear since 2008. The natural-colour image in figure 3,
acquired by MODIS, shows where the VIIRS sensor
detected unusually warm temperatures associated withfires on July 14, 2020.
Low water levels mean there is more area—mostly
grassland and shrubs—available to burn this year.
According to Patricia Kandus of the Universidad Nacionalde San Martín, many fires appeared to have been set
intentionally, though dry conditions have also madeit easier for fires to escape and burn uncontrolled.
“Fires have been historically used in this region toprovide pasture,” she said. “They are also widely usedin the islands to hunt wild animals, as well as to clear
vegetation cover to carry out land reclamation and diking
constructions for agriculture and tree planting projects.”
While the Paraná River Basin received some rain in June
and July, river watchers do not expect the river to makea full recovery until sustained wet season rains arrive in
October.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using
Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey, VIIRS data fromNASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview and the Suomi
National Polar-orbiting Partnership, and MODIS data from NASA
EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview.

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Barry Smith captured this evocative Meteor M2 RGB22 image showing the British Isles from Darwen, Lancashire on June 8, 2002.

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In the early morning of August 5, 2020, with the landscape well lit by moonlight, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer
Suite (VIIRS) on the NOAA-NASA Suomi NPP satellite obtained a clear view of Western Europe and its lights throughthe use of the VIIRS day-night band. This band detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared anduses filtering techniques to observe signals such as city lights, wildfires, airglow, and reflected moonlight.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens, using VIIRS day-night band data from the Suomi NPP

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Mackenzie Bay
MODIS-Web Image of the Day

Mackenzie Bay, imaged by NASA’s Terra satellite on June 11, 2020.

Mackenzie Bay sits in the Canadian Arctic, close to theborder of Yukon Territory, Canada. Each winter, a thickcoating of ice solidifies over the Bay while deep snow
coats the landscape. As temperatures rise in spring, theMackenzie River, which flows from the warmer south into
Mackenzie Bay, swells with meltwater. As it flows towards
the Bay, the rushing of warmer meltwater aids in breaking
up the ice clinging to the river and aids in spurring sea
ice retraction from the shoreline. Spring melt also fills theriver with sediment, which is carried to, and dumped into,
the chilly waters of Mackenzie Bay. Eventually, increasing
temperatures of spring and the flow of warmer fresh water
prevail over the layer of sea ice, and by summer the riverflows freely into Mackenzie Bay and from there into theBeaufort Sea.

On June 11, 2020, the Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terrasatellite acquired this true-colour image of Mackenzie Bay.
A layer of sea ice, broken and retreating, covers the watersof the Bay away from shore and a layer of fast ice clings to
the Canadian coastline. The Mackenzie River, swollen withspring meltwater and sediment, curls through the scenefrom the bottom (south) and flows northward. On the river’s
delta, fingers of sediment can be seen encroaching on theice, while copious muddy-brown sediment spills into the
Bay underneath the ice.
Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC

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Heat and Fire Scorch Siberia
NASA Earth Observatory
Story by Adam Voiland.

Eastern Siberia is famous for some of the coldest
wintertime temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere.
But in 2020, it has been the region’s wildly hightemperatures and wildfires that have wowed
meteorologists.
After several months of warm weather, the Russian townof Verkhoyansk reported a daytime temperature of 38°C
on June 20, probably a record high for the town, beating
the previous high of 37.3°C, recorded on July 25, 1988.
If verified, this will be the highest temperature on recordin the Arctic.
“This event seems very anomalous in the last
hundred years or so,” said NASA Goddard Institutefor Space Studies Director Gavin Schmidt. “Thebackground trends in temperature in this region areabout 3 degrees Celsius since the 19th century,
so the probabilities of breaking records there are
increasing fast.”
The map above shows land surface temperature
anomalies from March 19 to June 20, 2020. Red colours
depict areas that were hotter than average for the same
period from 2003-2018; blues were colder than average.
The map is based on data from the Moderate Resolution
Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua
satellite.
Note that the map depicts land surface temperatures(LSTs), not air temperatures. LSTs reflect how hot thesurface of the Earth would feel to the touch, and cansometimes be significantly hotter or cooler than air
temperatures.

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17

In a report about the remarkably warm temperaturesin Siberia, European scientists examined historicaltemperature data in their global ERA5 reanalysis, findingthat temperatures have been unusually warm in the region
since January 2020. Since the ERA5 data begins in 1979,
the European team also looked to GISTEMP, a NASAtemperature record with data through 1880. They could
not find any other examples in either dataset of such an
intense heatwave in this part of Siberia persisting for suchan extended period.
The persistent high-pressure atmospheric pattern thatbrought the extreme heat has exacerbated wildfires,
prompting dozens to burn in the region’s forest and shrub
ecosystems. Some of those ecosystems grow on top ofcarbon-rich layers of peat and permafrost. The naturalcolour image above shows smoke streaming from several
active wildfires in Russia’s Sakha region.
Most of Earth’s terrestrial carbon is stored in the upper
latitudes of the northern hemisphere, where many forestsin the region are dominated by a coniferous tree—theDahurian larch—that drops its needles each winter.
But because the winters are so cold, there are few
decomposers around to break the needles down. Overtime, you end up with lots of buried fuel that has built up
over centuries, even millennia, and stores huge quantities
of carbon in peat and soils.

Intense heatwaves can thaw the permafrost layer andmake long-frozen deposits susceptible to fires, which movecarbon from the ground to the atmosphere and contributeto global concentrations of greenhouse gases. In this partof Siberia, the signs of climate change are already here.
The heat and fires this year are just adding more evidence
to the climate change signal that we have seen in these
forests for years.
Though it is still early in the fire season, satellite
observations of active fires by NASA and NOAA’s MODIS
and VIIRS sensors show the number of fire detections tobe among the highest observed in any year since 2003.
“Over the Russian Far East, there has been about thesame amount of fire as last year, another very active
year,” said NASA and Columbia University scientist
Robert Field. “Both 2020 and 2019 were about twice
the 2003–2020 average, and about half as much as2011, the most active year.”
Image Credits
NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens,using data from the Level 1 and Atmospheres Active
Distribution System (LAADS) and Land Atmosphere Near
real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE), and data fromNASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview and theSuomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership.

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Ice Arch in the Nares Strait
NASA Earth Observatory

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image ofEllesmere Island, Canada, Greenland, and the ice arch spanning the Nares Strait on June 25, 2020.
Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC

Arctic Sea ice persisted in far northern Canada
during late June 2020, including the important‘ice arch’ that grows each winter in the Nares
Strait between Ellesmere Island, Canada andwestern Greenland. The upside-down ‘U’ shapeof the southwestern edge of the arch can be seen
close to the right edge of the image, spanning
the strait between Ellesmere Island (west) andGreenland (east). The bluish-white leading edge ofthe arch stands out in vivid contrast to the inkycolored open waters of the Nares Strait.
This ice arch is natural gatekeeper, preventing
sea ice from exiting the Arctic Ocean and drifting
southward into Baffin Bay. The Arctic Ocean
is considered a semi-enclosed ocean, as it issurrounded almost entirely by land. The northerncoastlines of these land masses—Eurasia, North
America, Greenland and a number of scatteredislands— keep most of the sea ice penned up,
making it less mobile than the sea ice that forms
around Antarctica. There are a few passageways
that allow ice to escape in the spring and summer.

Although the Nares Strait is relatively narrow,a strong southward-flowing current throughthe strait ensures plenty of Arctic sea ice is lost
there each year. As the ice arch forms, this flowof surface sea ice is halted and more ice remains
within the Arctic Ocean. The ice arch typicallymelts between June and July. although in 2019it collapsed early, beginning to crumble in April.
Early breakups were reported in 2017, 2010, and2008. In 2007, the arch failed to form at all.
Despite warm temperatures over most of the
Arctic this winter, and despite the extent of Arctic
sea ice hitting the fourth-lowest on record in May
of this year, the ice arch remained intact in lateJune. The light blue tint of the ice arch suggeststhat the ice has thinned and is becoming wet
as it melts. It doesn’t appear to be quite as wet
and thin as the fingers of ice on the shores andbetween the Canadian islands, but regions of dark
open water at the coast of Ellesmere Island andvery dark ice off Greenland suggest that collapse
should be iminent.

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Great Salt Lake, Utah
European Space Agency

This Sentinel-2 image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in thewestern hemisphere and one of the most saline inlandbodies of water in the world. The Great Salt Lake isthe largest remnants of prehistoric freshwater Lake
Bonneville, that once covered much of western Utah.
The lake is fed by the Bear, Weber and Jordan rivers
which, together, deposit around one million tonnes ofminerals in the lake each year. As the lake is endorheic(meaning without an outlet), the water evaporates leading
to a very high salt concentration. It greatly fluctuates insize, depending on the rates of evaporation and the flowof the rivers that feed it.

of which are Antelope and Fremont, lie in the southernpart of the lake.
The lake’s varying shoreline consists of beaches,marshes and mudflats. The bright, turquoise colours
visible on both sides of the lake are evaporation ponds,
from which various salts are collected in commercial
operations. Although it is commonly referred to as
America’s Dead Sea, the lake is nevertheless animportant habitat for millions of native and migratory birds.
It is also home to several types of algae, brine shrimp andbrine flies.

The distinct colour differences in the lake are causedby the Lucin Cutoff, an east-west causeway built tocreate a shorter route for the railroad, visible as a sharp
line cutting across the top part of the lake. This acts asa dam, preventing the waters from mixing, leading to
the north basin having a much higher salinity than thesouthern, freshwater part of the lake.

The lake’s basin is defined by the foothills of the snowcapped Wasatch Range to the east and by the Great Salt
Lake Desert (a remnant of the bed of Lake Bonneville)
to the west. This part of the desert is known as theBonneville Salt Flats and is used as an automobile
raceway, as the flat and smooth salt beds make the area
ideally suited for speed trials. Utah’s capital, Salt Lake
City, is visible in the bottom right of the image.

As the lake’s main tributaries enter from the south, thewater level of the southern section is slightly higher thanthat of the northern part. Several small islands, the largest

This image was processed in a way that included thenear-infrared channel, which makes vegetation appear
red while rocks and bare soil appear brown.

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Joachim Scharrer constructed this composite image covering all Europe, from three Meteor M2 passes on April 29, 2020.
Captured using MeteorGIS 2.24 software, the passes were at 07:22 UT, 09.01 UT and 10:41 UT and rendered in UTM projection.

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Lake Skadar, Montenegro and Albania
NASA Earth Observatory

Astronaut photograph ISS062-E-40353 was acquired on February 21, 2020, with a Nikon D5 digital
camera using a 400 millimeter lens and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility andthe Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center.

Dark and light sediments swirl around in the center of Lake
Skadar (also known as Lake Shkodra), the largest lake on
the Balkan Peninsula. This pattern captured the attentionof an astronaut onboard the International Space Station(ISS).
Lake Skadar, a karst lake that straddles the borderof Montenegro and Albania, is an example of acryptodepression, where parts of the lake bed extend
below sea level. The curved, spine-like ridges runningparallel with the southern shore are part of the Dinaric
Alps, which are comprised mostly of easily erodible rocks
such as limestone, dolomite, and other carbonates.
The swirling plume in the center of the lake is probably themixing of sediment that has been transported downstream
from higher elevations via snow-melt water and othermountain run‑off. A major source of this sediment inflow

comes from the Moraca River; whose wide delta occupies
much of the Montenegro shoreline. Smaller river deltas
along the northern edges of the lake also contributesediment. The Drin River and the Bojana River converge
just south of the ancient lake-front city of Shkodër, whichlies on the small delta of the Kir River. The lake and theserivers all ultimately drain into the Adriatic Sea.
As with many large freshwater lakes near cities, manyof the native plants and animals in Lake Skadar havebecome endangered due to human activity. Montenegro
has since made the western portion of the lake a nationalpark, and Albania declared its section as a nature reserve.
Both efforts were made to protect many species of birds,
microorganisms and aquatic life, including eels, snails andendemic fish species.
Text by Sara Schmidt, GeoControl Systems, JETS Contract at
NASA-JSC.

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A Sandy Flower in the PacificNASA Earth Observatory

In 2001, Dubai started
construction on three large
artificial islands in the
Persian Gulf shaped likepalm trees. A few years
later, Doha began dredging
for an island that resembled
a string of pearls and theUnited Arab Emirates
went to work building anarchipelago of 300 small
islands strategically placed
to look like a map of Earth.
Now another island with an
unusual shape has been
growing in shallow coastal
waters near Hainan, China’s
southernmost province.
Ocean Flower Island,built in Yangpu Bay, spansroughly 8 square kilometers,
putting it among the world’s
largest artificial islands.

The main flower shaped island starts to take shape in 2012
NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the USGS.

The Operational Land
Imager (OLI) on NASA’s
Landsat 8 satellite captured
this natural-colour image ofthe new island on May 6,
2020, as construction was
wrapping up and the island
neared its full opening inlate 2020. Early signs ofconstruction of the mainisland became visible toLandsat in 2012 and by
2014, the main flowershaped island had started totake shape. By 2020, it was
flanked by two connectedislands shaped like leaves. A
mixture of parks, residential
towers, museums, and otherinfrastructure had sprung up
on the new land.
While planners expect the
project will attract millions of
tourists and boost Hainan’s
economy, the project’s
environmental impacts
have attracted scrutiny.
In 2018, China’s central
government temporarilysuspended construction at

Flower island, imaged by Landsat-8 in May 2020
NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the USGS.

Ocean Flower Island—andseveral others—due toconcerns about damage
to coral reefs, oysters,

and marine ecosystems.
The same year, one ofChina’s regulatory agencies
announced a temporary

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hold on approvals for many
commercial land reclamation
projects managed by local
authorities.

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Storm Francis, imaged on August 25, 2020 by NOAA 20, overwhelmed the British
Isles with unseasonably heavy rainfall and strong winds
Image: NOAA

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