Group for Earth Observation

The Independent Amateur Quarterly Publication for

Number 13

Earth Observation and Weather Satellite Enthusiasts

March 2007

Inside this issue . . .
Join GEO on a visit to
EUMETSAT’s Headquarters in Darmstadt,
Germany on July 5-6 thisyear—details inside.
EUMETSAT’s MetOp-A
satellite is now in orbit andtransmitting whole-worldhigh resolution imagery . . .
Douglas Deans reviews
MetOp Manager, theessential imaging software
for MetOp-A ...
How do you prepare yourPC system for MetOp? Peter
Green guides you throughthe essentials ...
David Taylor has advice onmanaging the everincreasing flow of
EUMETCast data into yourPC system ...
We investigate the EverExpanding Ozone Hole,
which reached record
proportions last year
Earth Browser: Andrew
Thornton reviews thisremarkable satellite image
and weather profilingInternet software
Plus
much
more ...

Follow ‘Satellites View’ every Monthin Radio and Communications Monitoring Monthly
Radio and Communications Monitoring Monthly provides a regular4-page Weather Satellite column, “Satellites' View”, by Lawrence
Harris. In addition, there is an annual ‘special’ issue covering
WXsats containing additional features and reviews written by
Lawrence.
Radio and Communications Monitoring Monthly (ISSN 1749-7809)
is the magazine of choice for all serious radio enthusiasts and isavailable from most good newsagents as well as direct from thepublishers.
Subscriptions are available world-wide. For more information
contact Nice One Publishing Ltd, Tel: +44 (0)1202 862690 or visit
the website
www.monitoringmonthly.co.uk

MANAGEMENT TEAMA

ll the talk these days seems to centre on Europe’s first polar orbiting
weather imaging satellite, MetOp-A, and the wonderful HRPT
images that are being delivered from its AVHRR instrument. If you arestill sitting on the fence wondering what all the fuss is about, this issue
of GEO Quarterly should open your eyes and, hopefully, encourage you
to pursue this exciting new avenue of interest. And to help you on yourway, Douglas Deans has produced a most helpful article (page 25) toguide you through the intricacies of David Taylor’s new MetOp Manager
software.
his quarter we have a bulging post-bag of comments from readers: doplease continue to air your thoughts in our columns. We are always
pleased to hear what you say whether it be to correct our misconceptions,offer new perspectives on topics that we cover or just to say how muchyou enjoy GEO Quarterly.
EO has now completed three busy and highly stable years with analmost constant membership figure around the 500-550 mark. But
we have been working to a very tight (almost zero) profit margin and anincrease in membership would be beneficial. Please take every
opportunity to introduce like-minded friends to GEO.
EO has been fortunate to have a highly dedicated Management
Team: everyone listed in the panel opposite has covered in full all
expenses (telephone, stationery, postage, travel, air fares, hotels, etc)
resulting from their work on GEO’s behalf. As Francis Bell explains
overleaf, we currently face rising production and distribution costs,
making it prudent to increase our subscriptions from March 1. We hopethat you will agree that the consistently high standard of service GEO
provides is worth just that little extra to guarantee the Group’s future.
e look forward to your support in what promise to be exciting years
ahead

T

G
G

W

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: info@geo-web.org.uk

GEO Quarterly Editor
Les Hamilton,
8 Deeside Place
Aberdeen AB15 7PW
Scotland, UK.
email: editor@geo-web.org.uk

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
Fax:
01509 559 015

Meteorological Consultant
Peter Wakelin
email: meteo@geo-web.org.uk

Technical Consultant (hardware)David Simmons
email: tech@geo-web.org.uk

Webmaster and Website Matters
Ray Godden
e-mail: webmaster@geo-web.org.uk

Education Coordinator
David Painteremail: education@geo-web.org.uk

GEO Shop Manager
Clive Finnis
email: shop@geo-web.org.uk

International Liaison

Contents
GEO Report
GEO Symposium - May 2007
The Expanding Ozone HoleEllesmere Ice Shelves Under Threat
EUMETCast and MetOp Data
Modifying your PC to receive MetOp Data
SurgutCover and Full Page Image Details
Cape Farewell
GEO to Visit EUMETSAT’s HQ in Darmstadt
In the Bleak Midwinter ...

Francis Bell
Francis BellLes Hamilton
Les Hamilton
David Taylor
Peter GreenLes Hamilton
Francis BellLes Hamilton

2
3
4
9
10
13
14
16
17
19
21

GEO Shop
NOAA Satellite Predictions for the UK and Western Europe
Helplines and Internet Discussion Groups
Copy Deadline for June issue
GEO Membership Renewal Form

i
ii
iii
iii
iv

Earth Imaging News
MetOp Manager - new software from David Taylor
Hurricane Track Map
Geostationary Satellites - how they get up there
Powerless
In Box - Readers’ Letters and Comment
News in Brief
Publishing EUMETSAT Data on the Internet
Earth Browser
Radar Satellites - Part 2: SAR Imaging
Software Showcase
Demystifying the Butterfly Effect

23
25
30
32
34
35
36
38
39
41
43
44

Peter Wakelin
Douglas DeansPeter Wakelin
Francis Bell

Andrew ThorntonPeter Wakelin
Douglas Deans
Storm Dunlop

Peter Green‘Hollowtree’
Eggesford
Devon EX18 7QX
Tel:
01769 580 700
email: international@geo-web.org.uk
Nigel Evansemail: nigel@geo-web.org.uk

PublisherGroup for Earth Observation Ltd.
The Group for Earth Observation Limited is acompany in England and Wales limited byguarantee and not having share capital. Company
number 4975597.
The registered office is Coturnix House, Rake
Lane, Milford, Godalming, Surrey GU8 5AB

Printing
Advent Colour Ltd., Unit 1, Crown Way,
Walworth Industrial Estate
Andover, Hampshire SP10 5LU.

Responsibility for Constructional
Projects and Software
Every effort is made to ensure that the technicaland constructional articles published in thisQuarterly are correct. However, the ultimate
responsibility is with the reader to ensure thesafety of constructions and for any interfacingwith other equipment. GEO cannot accept liability
for shortcomings in any published design or any
constructions carried out by members or otherthird parties.

Copyright GEO © 2007
The contents of this Quarterly remain theintellectual property of the Group for Earth
Observation Ltd. and its contributors. Copying oftext or images, either from the printed Quarterly
or from any electronically stored source, isforbidden without permission from the editor.

GEO Quarterly No 12Group for Earth Observation

December 2006

Francis BellAs I compose this report, GEO is entering
its fourth year as an established Group with
our aim of supporting those amateur,
educational and non commercial users
interested in observing the Earth,particularly by the direct or indirect
reception of weather satellite images.
Inevitably we have a turn-over ofmembership as readers interests changewith time. I am always aware of thechanging nature of our hobby, with thetrend seemingly to be moving away fromdirect reception of satellite signals andtowards the use of retransmitted orarchived Earth images. For myself, there isno substitute for live satellite reception
using equipment I have built myself, evenaccepting that more pristine archived
images may subsequently be available.
Fortunately, members who fail to renew
always seem to be compensated for by
new members joining. To these newmembers I offer a sincere welcome to ourfriendly and talented Group. Please beaware that your contributions to the Group,in any form, will always be welcome.
Annual Subscription
The annual membership subscription has
been set at a very modest figure toencourage new membership and to retain
our existing members. However, it must berecognised that, as a consequence of thispolicy, our Group’s financial reserves arevery slender. Most of our expenses relate
to the production and distribution of ourQuarterly magazine, though banking
charges are also significant. Both postal
and banking charges have increased
recently and, although the Management
Team have addressed these issues, we arestill faced with some increased charges. As
a consequence, it was decided to revise
the membership subscription scale ofcharges for 2007. The new UK membershipis increased to £20, European membership£24 and the rest of the world £28. Nobody
likes increases but it’s either this or cuts inour services.
Membership Secretary
Recent GEO Quarterlies have carried
notices inviting applications for somebody
new to embrace the role of Membership
Secretary. Nigel Evans, supported by hiswife Michele, has fulfilled this role since thestart of GEO but now, quite understandably,
wishes to pass on responsibilities tosomeone new. I am very pleased toannounce that we received two responses
from members and after very amiable
discussions David Anderson agreed to act

2

as GEO’s Membership Secretary until
further notice. David’s contact details
appear in the Information panel on page 1of this issue. Our thanks to David foragreeing to take over this vital role within
the group: without its membership GEO
would not exist. And of course, our sincere
thanks to Nigel and Michele for theirsupport in looking after our interests overthese past three years. The contact e-mailcontinues to bemembers@geo-web.org.uk

PayPalWhile looking at our banking costs it
became clear that the process of making
payments for membership subscriptions
and shop payments could be streamlined if
we added PayPal to our payment methods.
Accordingly a PayPal account was opened
in November 2006 and our brief experiencesince then indicates that its simplicity ismaking it an easy and popular method for
payments. There is a small saving
compared with credit cards but theconvenience of PayPal seems to be
making it a favoured method of payment.

• Sept 24/28 - GEO hope to have apresence at the EUMETSAT/AMS meetingin Amsterdam• November - Kempton amateur radio andcomputer rally.
Our friends in The Netherlands, Werkgroep
Kunstmanen, will be holding meetings in
Utrecht on March 10, May 12, September 8
and November 10.

The Quarterly Question.
The last Quarterly Question related to the dateand exact time of launch for MetOp-A. The
answer, which was widely published, wasOctober 19, 2006 at 1628 UT. I received
several entries by email and, as promised, I
picked a winner on December 25. The winner
is Adrian Chamberlain. Adrian or his nominee
receive the free entry to our Symposium.

Late News - New Event
BHROP (the British Rocketry Oral History
Programme) have invited GEO to run ademonstration and information stand,including live weather satellite imaging,
during the BROHP Conference on
April 12-14, and perhaps make apresentation to bring delegates up to datewith the latest weather satellite information.
GEO members interested in attending thisconference, which is being held in
Charterhouse School, Godalming, Surrey,
should visit the BROHP web site at:
http://www. brohp.org.uk
Topics to be covered at the conference will
include:GEO’s display at last November’s Kempton rally• Space related matters• UK Space Industry• UK Space Science and Exploration• Education and Space• History of Space Flight

Diary Dates in 2007
Dates for your diary were published in the
December Quarterly and there are separate
notices elsewhere in this edition relating the
May Symposium and to GEO’s July visit to
EUMETSAT in Darmstadt, Germany.
Please read these notices carefully. In addition
here is a summary of our events for 2007.
• April15 - The Kempton radio and computer
rally.
• May 12 - GEO’s annual Symposium at the
NSC Leicester.
• July 5/6 - GEO’s visit to EUMETSAT’s HQ
in Darmstadt Germany.
• July 20/22 - GEO at AMSAT’s meeting in
Guildford. Please note that this is arevised date for the AMSAT meeting which
has been brought forward one week.
• September - The two day Leicester
amateur radio rally.

www.geo-web.org.uk

The previous Quarterly Question was pretty
straightforward. In this issue we pose aslightly more engaging problem: ‘How far
does MetOp-A travel in exactly 365 days?’.
The official ESA datasheet states that
MetOp-A orbits at a mean
altitude of 817 km and thateach complete orbit takes
101 minutes. You also require
to know the mean radius of
the Earth, which is 6373 km.
Using the precise figures quoted above,
determine the total distance flown by
MetOp-A, to the nearest million kilometres.

March 2007

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 13

Francis BellGEO’s popular annual symposium will once
more be held in the National Space Centre(NSC) Leicester, an excellent venue which
we have used several times previously.
This year the date has been chosen to
avoid the Bank Holiday weekend, whichshould make travel easier. The date is
May 19, 2007 and the Symposium takes
place between 9.00 am and 6.00 pm.

please email your thoughts and ideas.
Remember, the rationale for holding our
event is to share our collective
experiences: please contribute if you can.

Both last year and in 2005 we enjoyed apacked programme, with numerous talks
from expert speakers occupying much of
the time. By the end of the day everyone
agreed they had enjoyed the experience
immensely, but that one essential
ingredient was in short supply—there just
was not enough time to enjoy theworkshops and to chat at length with theother delegates.

Food, travel and accommodation are theresponsibility of each individual delegate.
There is a cafeteria within the NSC which
delegates are welcome to use.

Following
numerous
requests we
aim to put thisright in 2007
and to thisend havedecided thatthe mainthrust of the
Symposium
will bedirected
towards
practical
One of the workshops during
workshops
Symposium 2006
and smallgroup tutorials, together with somespeakers and our AGM. This will generatea busy day but perhaps not as hectic as in
the past. A full programme for the day,which will include our ever-popular rafflewith its bargain ‘goodies’, will be publishedon our website when more details have be
confirmed.

Cost
The cost is £12, payable on the day, andwhich includes entry into the NSC's
impressive exhibition area.

The NSC is located close to the centre of
Leicester with easy road rail and bus links.
There is free parking at the NSC.
Overnight Accommodation
In previous years, most of GEO’s
Management Team, along with invited
speakers and members who have had totravel from afar, have booked overnightaccommodation in Leicester for the Friday
evening and have enjoyed a meal together.
We recommend the Campanile Hotel whichis conveniently located a little over a milefrom the NSC. GEO members have used
this hotel before.
Details:
Campanile Hotel,
St Matthews Way,
Bedford Street North,
Leicester LE1 3JE
Tel: 0116 261 6600
Fax: 0116 261 6601
Email: leicester@envergure.co.uk

Remember: this is your Symposium, andas GEO members you are entitled to havea say as to what takes place on the day.

Any GEO member, together with wife,
partner or friends, is welcome to attend the
Symposium.
Pre-registration
In order to ensure that we are prepared forthe numbers attending the Symposium wewould appreciate you pre-registering(although you do not pay till the day of theevent). Please register by sending an email
to Peter Green atinternational@geo-web.org.uk

You can register on the day if need be, but
pre-registration is preferred. The GEOManagement Team look forward to seeing
you in Leicester on May 19

The Symposium Programme
As we are holding the Symposium later inthe year on this occasion, a final
programme for the day has yet to be drawn
up. However, we anticipate a weatherrelated talk from keynote speaker Storm
Dunlop as well as demonstrations of live
reception of Meteosat, NOAA AVHRR and
MetOp imagery. We hope to have David
Taylor back to discuss the latest
developments in the ever-burgeoning
EUMETCast service and how his softwareis developing to cope with these.
To learn the latest news, keep consulting
the GEO Website at

Anyone wishing to make apresentation, or run a workshop
or demonstration on the day, isencouraged to contact Francis
Bell at:http://www.geo-web.org.uk/sym07.html

from late March onwards.

francis@geo-web.org.uk

Likewise, if there is any specific topic which
you would like us to arrange for Leicester,

Clive Finnis in discussion with visitors to the
GEO Shop stall during Symposium 2006

Arne van Belle setting up at Symposium 2006

www.geo-web.org.uk

Acknowledgement
All photographs on this page courtesy
Ferdinand Valk.

3

GEO Quarterly No 13

Group for Earth Observation

March 2007

Les Hamilton
The Antarctic Ozone Hole proved
something of a sensation when it was first
discovered quarter of a century ago. But
despite our efforts to eradicate the pollutionthat is its underlying cause, recent ozone
measurements made by ESA’s Envisat andNASA’s Aura satellites have shown theozone hole to be as large as ever. Indeed,
actual ozone loss over the Antarctic
reached a record high on October 2, 2006,
at 40 million tonnes, exceeding theprevious record ozone loss of 39 million
tonnes for 2000.
What is Ozone?
Ozone is a form of oxygen which occurs intrace quantities in the upper atmosphere.
Unlike normal oxygen (O2), where every
molecule contains two atoms, the ozone
molecule (O3) contains three oxygen
atoms. This key difference bestows on
ozone its critical life-giving property. Ozone
absorbs solar ultraviolet radiation sostrongly (over 97%) that even the minutetraces of the gas present in thestratosphere protect life on Earth andrender our planet habitable. Over 90% of
atmospheric ozone resides in thestratosphere, at altitudes between 10 and
50 kilometres, with the maximum
concentration at approximately 30 km.
Ozone is continuously created in the upper
atmosphere by the interaction between
high-energy solar UV radiation and normal
oxygen. But ozone lives life on the edge.
Other particles already naturally present in
the atmosphere, particularly, nitrogenoxides created in electric discharges, arecontinually destroying ozone. The naturallevels of ozone in the atmosphere are,therefore, always a delicate balance
between the processes that create it andthose that destroy it.
The total mass of ozone in the atmosphereis about 3 billion tonnes. This may seem alot, but this represents a mean
concentration of just 0.6 parts per million.
The peak concentration, at an altitude ofaround 30 kilometres, can reach as muchas 15 parts per million. To give a better
picture of ozone concentration, this is
generally measured in Dobson Units (DU).
See the grey side panel for details.
In the absence ozone the intense UV
radiation from the sun would sterilise theEarth’s surface. The planet would be totally
lifeless as neither plants nor animals could
survive. Stratospheric ozone absorbs
almost all the sun’s highly energetic UV-B

4

radiation and around half the UV-A. Evenso, excessive exposure to sunlight can stillcause sunburn and lead to skin cancer andeye damage.
The Ozone HoleThe Antarctic Ozone Hole was discoveredby the British Antarctic Survey, fromground-based measurements made atHalley Bay, Antarctica, between 1981 and1983. The findings were reported in 1985
and satellite measurements confirmed thatthe springtime ozone loss was a continentwide feature.
Further research conducted at the US
McMurdo Station, backed up by NASA
stratospheric aircraft flights into the
Antarctic region in 1987, indicatedconclusively that the ozone loss was
related to the presence of chlorine andbromine atoms in the stratosphere. It wasalso established that this chlorine andbromine derived from man-madechlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which had
migrated up from the lower atmosphere.
The average atmospheric ozone
concentration is around 300 Dobson Units.
What scientists refer to as the Ozone Holeis not of course totally devoid of ozone but
is a region where ozone depletion isparticularly severe—often resulting in theconcentration falling to around 100 DU. Anyregion where ozone concentration falls
below 220 DU is considered to be part ofthe ozone hole. Figure 1 shows the ozone
hole as determined by the OMI (Ozone
Monitoring Experiment) aboard NASA’s
Aura satellite on October 4, 2004. The
critical 220 DU contour is highlighted.
Figure 2 is an OMI image acquired on
September 29, 2006 and shows the ozone
concentration in the stratosphere above theSouth Pole. Greens and yellows show
areas with the highest ozone
concentrations, blues and purples show
where it is lowest. A purple veil ofextremely low ozone levels stretches
across most of Antarctica. The increased
extent of the Ozone Hole since 2004 isclear to see.
CFCs
CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) are man-madechemicals which were formerly used as
propellants in spray cans, refrigerants,
electronics cleaning agents, and in foam
and insulating products. Unfortunately, thevery properties that make them so useful—chemical inertness, non-toxicity andwww.geo-web.org.uk

What is the Dobson Unit?
Satellite sensors and other ozonemeasuring devices measure the totalozone concentration for the entire
atmospheric column. The Dobson Unit isa way to describe how much ozone there
would be in the column if it were all
squeezed into a single layer.
If all the air in a vertical column extending
from the Earth’s surface to the upperedge of the atmosphere could be placed
at a temperature of 0°C at atmosphericpressure it would be 8 kilometres tall. All
the ozone, under the same conditions,would stack up to just 3 millimetres. The
Dobson Unit is defined as thatconcentration of ozone that would createsuch a layer 0.01 millimetre deep. Overthe entire Earth the ozone layer’s notional
layer 3 mm deep therefore amounts toabout 300 DU.
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/
facts/dobson.html

insolubility in water—also make them
resistant to removal from the lower
atmosphere. Small quantities of these
CFCs eventually find their way up into thestratosphere where UV radiation slowly
breaks them down, releasing chlorine andbromine atoms which are highly effective at
destroying ozone.
Eventually, this process will exhaust all thestratospheric CFCs and allow the ozone
layer to recover but this will certainly takemore than half a century to achieve.
Meanwhile, the reduced ozone levels willcontinue to increase the quantity of harmful
ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earth’s
surface.
When does the Ozone Hole form?
The Antarctic ozone hole forms each year
during Spring (September-November in thesouthern hemisphere), when the totalozone concentration is found to decline
sharply by some 60% over most of the
Antarctic continent.
During the cold dark Antarctic winter, polar
stratospheric ice clouds (PSCs) form whentemperatures drop below -78°C. These
clouds are responsible for chemicalchanges that promote production ofchlorine and bromine atoms from CFCs.
When sunlight returns to the South Poleafter the darkness of the polar winter, it
triggers the chemical reactions involving

Figure 1 - The ozone hole on October 4, 2004, the 220 DU contour highlighted

Figure 2 - The ozone hole on September 29, 2006

NASA image courtesy the Scientific Visualisation Studioat Goddard Space Flight Center.

NASA image courtesy the Scientific Visualisation Studioat Goddard Space Flight Center.

Figure 4
The area of the
Antarctic ozone
hole at 12:00 GMT
of each day fromGOME (1996-2002)
and SCIAMACHY(2003-2006)
Assimilated Ozone
Fields.
Credits: KNMI/TEMIS

Figure 5
The ozone loss at
12:00 GMT of each
day from GOME
(1996-2002) andSCIAMACHY(2003-2006)
Assimilated Ozone
Fields.
Credits: KNMI/TEMIS

Figure 3 - The 2006 ozone hole on September 29, 2006 as measured by the
SCIAMACHY instrument onboard Envisat
Ozone loss is derived by measuring both the area and depth of the ozone hole. The
2006 ozone hole has an area of 28 million square km, nearly as large as the record
ozone hole extension during 2000, while its depth is around 100 Dobson Units,
rivalling the record low ozone recorded in 1998.
The record ozone loss during 2006 was attained because both these measurements
occurred simultaneously. A combination of very low stratospheric temperatures withsunlight is required to sustain the processes that deplete ozone, and the record
depletion last September/October resulted because temperatures above Antarctica
fell to their lowest since 1979.
Credits: KNMI/TEMIS

Figure 6
The depth of the
Antarctic ozone
hole at 12:00 GMT
of each day fromGOME (1996-2002)
and SCIAMACHY(2003-2006)
Assimilated Ozone
Fields.
Credits: KNMI/TEMISGEO Quarterly No 13

chlorine (and bromine) and ozone in thestratosphere. Each chlorine atom initiates achain reaction that can destroy hundreds ofozone molecules.
This process starts in mid-August eachyear, peaking in late September or early
October. As summer approaches andtemperatures in the stratosphere rise,
conditions become less favourable for theozone-destroying reactions. Winds
surrounding the South Polar region
weaken, allowing the ozone-depleted air
inside the vortex to mix with ozone-rich air
outside it: this enables the ozone layer tostabilise once more, until the following
spring.
Although some ozone depletion also occurs
in the Arctic during the Northern
Hemisphere spring, winter temperatures in
the Arctic stratosphere are less severe thanin the Antarctic and ozone depletion iscorrespondingly less.
The Montreal Protocol
In 1987, the Montreal Protocol banned theuse of the most serious man-made ozonedestroying chemicals and there are signs
that the atmospheric concentrations ofsome of these have begun to decline.
Chlorine and bromine concentrations in thestratosphere should reach a maximum inthe first few years of the 21st century, whenozone concentrations should,
correspondingly, be expected to fall to theirlowest levels.
From this point the Antarctic Ozone Holeshould start to recover, but the process will
be slow and it could be at least a further
decade before conclusive evidence of thiswill be detectable. The complete recoveryof the Antarctic ozone layer is not expected
to occur until at least the year 2050—andprobably considerably farther into the
future. Today NASA scientists use the latest
tools, including satellite observations andcomputer models of atmospheric chemistry
and weather, to determine what effect thisban has had and how long we may have to
wait for a full ozone layer recovery. NASAshares the latest information and satellite
images of the ozone hole with the public on
its Ozone Watch website at:
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/

How is Ozone Monitored?
Currently, global ozone concentrations areconstantly monitored by two satellites in low
Earth orbit, NASA’s Aura and ESA’s
Envisat. The former collects data using the
OMI instrument, the latter via its
SCIAMACHY imaging spectrometer.
OMI
The Ozone Monitoring Instrument is anadir-viewing, wide-field-imaging UV andvisible spectrometer designed to monitor
ozone and other atmospheric species,
including aerosols. It is the key instrument
on Aura for monitoring the recovery of theozone layer.

6Group for Earth Observation

The OMI instrument can distinguishbetween aerosol types such as smoke, dust
and sulphates, and can also measure cloudpressure and coverage, which provide thedata needed to derive tropospheric ozone.
OMI is a contribution of the Netherlands's
Agency for Aerospace Programs (NIVR) in
collaboration with the Finnish
Meteorological Institute (FMI) to the EOSAura mission. Figures 1 and 2 are OMI
images which compare the ozone holes of2004 and 2006.
SCIAMACHY
The Scanning Imaging Absorption
Spectrometer for Atmospheric
CHartographY is an imaging spectrometer
whose primary mission objective is making
global measurements of trace gases in the
troposphere and in the stratosphere. The
solar radiation transmitted, backscatteredand reflected from the atmosphere isrecorded at relatively high resolution over awide wavelength range ideally suited to thedetection of clouds and aerosols. This
instrument yields total column values anddistribution profiles in the stratosphere foraerosols and trace gases, including ozone.
Figure 3 shows the total ozone forecast
derived from SCIAMACHY for
September 29, 2006 (the same date as infigure 2).
GOME
The Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment
was a spectrometer aboard ESA’s ERS-2
satellite which made high-resolution
measurements of spectra reflected from theatmosphere in a wide wavelength range
from the ultraviolet to the near-infrared.
GOME enabled retrieval of the total ozone
column from the Earth's surface to the topof the atmosphere as well as its vertical
distribution.
The 2006 Situation
ESA have been collecting ozone statistics over
the Antarctic since 1997, thanks to GOME and,since 2003, from SCIAMACHY.

Figure 4 illustrates the extent of the ozone
hole from 1997 to the present day as a setof coloured traces. The ozone hole itself isdefined as that area on the globe, inmillions of square kilometres, where theozone column values fall below 220 DU.
Figure 5 shows similar plots for the actual
ozone loss, defined as the mass of ozone
required (expressed in megatons) to fill theozone hole to 220 DU over its whole area.
Figure 6 plots the year-by-year depth of theozone hole. This depth is the lowest ozone
column value (in DU) for latitudes below
30° South.
In each of these figures, data for 2006 is
highlighted as a prominent dotted line.
Together, the graphs provide compelling
evidence that the ozone hole continues toexpand and that the restorative process
has yet to kick in. Indeed, over the past
decade the ozone level has lowered byabout 0.3% per year on a global scale.

www.geo-web.org.uk

March 2007

Figure 7 - Area of the 2006 Ozone Hole
Data: http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Figure 8 - Minimum Ozone during 2006
Data: http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/

On October 8 the OMI on NASA's Aurasatellite, which measures the total quantityof ozone from the ground to the upper
atmosphere over the entire Antarctic
continent, observed a low value of only
85 DU in a region over the East Antarctic
ice sheet.
Also, scientists from NOAA's Earth System
Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado,
who use balloon-borne instruments tomeasure ozone directly over the South
Pole, discovered that the total column
ozone had plunged from 300 DU in mid-july
to just 93 DU by October 9.
More importantly, in the critical layer lying
between approximately 12 and25 kilometres above the Earth's surface,
only a minuscule 1.2 DU of ozone
remained (having plunged from an average
non-hole reading of 125 DU in July andAugust), showing that in this layer of theatmosphere, the ozone had been almost
totally destroyed.
Studies on the ozone layer will continue
apace and the recently launched MetOp-A
satellite, which includes GOME-2, a nextgeneration ozone-monitoring instrument,
will be lending its weight to guarantee
continuity of observations of this vitalenvironmental factor well into future
decades.
Acknowledgements
This article could would not have beenpossible without extensive references tothe public domain websites of both NASAand ESA.
Further Reading
Stratospheric ozone monitoring and research:
http://www.ozonelayer.noaa.gov/

Ozone Hole watch
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/

The 16:10 UT MODIS image from NASA’s
Aqua satellite on August 13, 2005
Image: MODIS Rapid Response Team

March 2007

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 13

Les Hamilton
Ellesmere Island is not a name that trips lightly off the tongue. Most
people have never heard of it. Yet it is the tenth largest island on
the planet with an area of 196 000 km2 (Great Britain, with an areaof 245 000 km2 comes 8th). Ellesmere Island is located at the northof the Canadian territory of Nunavut, adjacent to northwest
Greenland, and is notable because it possesses the only ice
shelves in the Arctic. Early in the 20th century, the explorer Robert
E Peary discovered that the island’s northwest coast was fringed
by an ice shelf some 500 kilometres long. But the ravages of the20th century have steadily eroded this to just 10% of its originalextent: all that remains today are the six separate and muchsmaller Alfred Ernest, Ayles, Markham, Milne, McClintock andWard Hunt ice shelves.
Unlike Antarctic and Greenlandic ice shelves, which are the floatingseaward extensions of massive glaciers, the Ellesmere Island ice
shelves have been built up over many centuries by persistentwinds which blew landward, compressing and thickening the sea
ice into a solid plate against the northern coastline.

Part of the Ellesmere Island coastline showing the location of
two of the ice shelves (Terra image - 20:45 UT on August 13, 2005)
Image: MODIS Rapid Response TeamThe Ellesmere ice shelves are believed to have been in position forseveral thousand years but throughout the 20th century, the largestof them, the Ward Hunt Shelf, has experienced a history ofdisintegration. A stretch of thick landfast sea ice more than 10
metres thick along the northern coastline of the island, this shelf
lost 600 square km of ice following a massive calving incident
during 1961-1962. And the breakup has continued into the current
century with another fragmentation episode between 2000-2002
when it split in two and calved a number of sizeable ice islands.
The summertime ‘population’ of Ellesmere Island is sparse andconsists of some 150 or so military, atmospheric and environmental
personnel divided between just three locations—Alert, Eureka andGrise Fjord. During winter this falls to just 50 or so hardy souls.
The outcome of course, is that events relating to the ice shelves
readily escape detection, a case in point being the almost total lossof the Ayles Ice Shelf in August 2005—an occurrence only recently
confirmed by studying historic satellite images and seismic data,
despite being biggest ice shelf collapse in Canada’s far north in 30
years.
The Arctic summer of 2005 was unusually warm and temperaturesrising a full 3°C above the norm resulted in a strong overall decline
in Arctic sea ice. It is believed that these elevated temperatures,
low accumulations of new sea ice around the shelf’s margins andhigh offshore winds combined to effect the breakup.

The Ayles Ice Shelf, imaged shortly after separation at 19:05 UT on
August 13, 2005 (at the mid point of the northern coastline as shown above)
Image: MODIS Rapid Response TeamOn August 13, 2005, some time between 17:30 and 18:30 UT, theAyles Ice Shelf finally broke free from Ellesmere Island and began
drifting out to sea, leaving a trail of ice debris in its wake and fillingthe mouth of the fjord with huge ice blocks. The coloured MODIS
image opposite, acquired by NASA’s Terra satellite at 16:10 UT on
August 13, 2005 shows the shelf still intact little more than an hour
before separation. A second Terra MODIS image (above) acquired
at 19:05 UT the same day, clearly shows the start of the breakup(which took under an hour) as a lead of open water between the
shelf and the Ayles
Fjord glacier. The
actual breakup
event wassufficiently powerfulthat tremors were
picked up on Alert’s
earthquake monitors
250 kilometres
away.
Within an hour theformer ice shelf had
become a giant ice
concluded on page 38 ...

www.geo-web.org.uk

A RadarSat image showing the position of theformer Ayles Shelf at 02:42 UT on August 15, 2005
Image: Canadian Space Agency

9

GEO Quarterly No 13

Group for Earth Observation

March 2007

David Taylor
The year 2006 has seen the steady growth of services offered on
EUMETCast—the easy to set up wide-bandwidth broadcasting
service from EUMETSAT. Whilst the major event was the launch of
MetOp-A and the subsequent provision of a continuous HRPT feedfrom this new European polar orbiting satellite, there have been anumber of other service additions, the effects of which can be seenin the attached graphs.
The data in the graphs opposite show the throughput on my main
EUMETCast receiver PC on December 2. Note that this onlyshows the data I have chosen to take, and it is not the total
throughput from EUMETCast: that will be substantially greater. ThisPC, which is probably fairly representative of a typical EUMETCast
system, now receives• Meteosat-8 and foreign satellite data
• NOAA-17 and NOAA-18 regional AVHRR data
• Free basic DWDSAT data
• MetOp global AVHRR data.

Daily Graph (5-minute average) - Maximum: 527 kB/s, Average: 269 kB/s

Weekly Graph (30-minute average) - Maximum: 502 kB/s, Average: 216 kB/s

The data collection uses the standard SNMP/MRTG tools and was
described earlier (GEO Quarterly No 11, page 30).
AVHRR - one station
The first live data from the regional AVHRR service was received
on March 14. This is the service where multiple EUMETSAT
ground stations in Spain (Canary Islands) and elsewhere receive
live data from NOAA-17 and NOAA-18, then send it to Darmstadt
for collation and onward rebroadcasting over EUMETSAT. It is partof the EUMETSAT Advanced Retransmission Service (EARS). On
the Yearly graph you can see a perceptible rise in the throughput
during mid-March, even though just one station was active.

Monthly Graph (2-hour average) - Maximum: 347 kB/s, Average: 188 kB/s

AVHRR - multiple stations
Later in the year, in mid-July, two new stations were added to the
EARS-AVHRR service—one in Lannion, France, and the other in
the Svalbard archipelago north of Norway. My own system shows
an increased throughput rate from the end of July. In mid-Augustdata from the Canary Islands station at Maspalomas was added,
allowing the EARS-AVHRR system to offer data from threestations. Some passes would result in a total of 31 minutes
continuous HRPT data!

system, the net effect was to increase the average daily throughput
from 180 kB/s to 280 kB/s by the end of the year—an increase of
more than 50%!

DWDSAT - free for all
On September 13, rather out of the blue, Deutcher Wetterdienst(DWD) announced that the basic subset of its DWDSAT data would
be available to all via EUMETCast. I only added DWDSAT to mymain PC on November 22 when DWD started to include somehigh-resolution reprocessed NOAA polar orbiter data to the stream.
However, this does not seem to have had a very noticeable effecton the throughput.

How the Data Throughput Varies
The Weekly graph above shows a spike on the Thursday whendata was accidentally sent twice during a period of scheduled
maintenance at EUMETSAT. The periodic nature of data volume ismore obvious in the earlier part of this graph where Meteosat-8
data made up the majority of the throughput. As the satellite only
views one face of the Earth there is less compressed data during
the night than during the day. (Were the data not compressed, thethroughput would be constant. By the way, it is a losslesscompression which is used so no data is lost or damaged).
Following the addition of MetOp-A data on the Tuesday, thethroughput graph becomes more complex because the 100-minutespan of MetOp-A data (also compressed, so that there is lessthroughput during the night-time part of the pass) is superimposedon the daily variation of the Meteosat-8 data. The Daily graphperhaps illustrates this best of all.

MetOp - continuous global HRPTThe most recent event came at the end of November 2006 whenthe AVHRR data stream from the MetOp-A satellite was released.
This provides world-wide, continuous coverage from MetOp-A at
1-kilometre ground resolution, providing spectacular images ofcourse, some of which appear elsewhere in this issue.
But the data-rate, as HRPT direct-readout user will know, is665.4 kb/s and, after including the add calibration and spatial
location information, rather more than this is transmitted by
EUMETCast. Even after the built-in compression in the TelliCast

10

Yearly Graph (1-day average) - Maximum: 279 kB/s, Average: 163 kB/s

Of course this great increase meant that those who had not
optimised their systems in preparation for the new data werelooking for hints and tips on avoiding data loss. Fortunately, due toinvestigation by GEO members, including Arne van Belle andDouglas Deans, a number of fixes were to hand.

Outages
There were a couple of times during the year where data
throughput was reduced—one in early January when Meteosat-8

www.geo-web.org.uk

March 2007

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 13

An image from the 10:07 UT MetOp-A pass on December 1, 2006 showing the British Isles, captured by David Taylor. The data are stored on board thesatellite then dumped to Svalbard on the subsequent orbit before being disseminated. The image above comes from the 1.6 µm reflective IR channel-3.
Image © EUMETSAT 2006

www.geo-web.org.uk

11

GEO Quarterly No 13

was being decontaminated (so no thermalchannel data was available from thenormally cooled detectors), and a glitch
around the third week in September when
Meteosat-8 suffered a glitch and data fromthe standby satellite (Meteosat-9) was
substituted.
More recently, we have seen a couple of
EUMETCast glitches where some of myown systems lost lock during the event andfailed to recover without manualintervention. One example of that can beseen on the Weekly graph, early on the
Monday morning.
The outlook?
In summary, we are now receiving arounddouble the data throughput compared with
15 months ago (as far back as my graphs
show) from about 140 kB/s to 280 kB/s
daily average. What will the next 15 months
bring?

Appendix
Optimising your System
MetOp brings a great deal more data to
your Receive PC as each 3-minute fileoccupies 28 MB, which totals
approximately 550 MB per hour (13 GB perday). A twin-PC configuration isrecommended where one PC is devoted toreception and the other to processing.

Group for Earth Observation

March 2007

folder, prior to being moved on to the‘received’ directory once they are complete.
If your software tries to access these data
files before they have built up fully (which
can take as long as 30 seconds) you may
end up with incomplete data.

received where the FSY file increased toover 92 MB. This suggests that, for themost robust systems, a RAMdisk and‘file_database_size’ of 150 MB should besafe. Alternatively, you can just miss somesegments!

If you are running a RAMdisk, ensure it is
at least 80 MB in size. You must also editthe ‘file_database_size’ entry to make surethat the TelliCast software uses the newvalue. 80 MB is actually 83886080 bytes,
but I like to allow a little margin and specify
just 80000000 bytes for the file size (sevenzeros).

If you run your system for less than 24hours per day, you may be able to getaway with a smaller size (but not less than
70 MB), but if you run 24/7 you should err
on the larger size.

You will have to ensure that the code
shown in figure 2 is added to your recv_ini
file.

Finally, a minor mystery. When MetOp
approaches the North Pole it comes within
range of the Svalbard ground station wherestored data for the completed orbit isdumped. However, the data you receive via
EUMETCast appears to halt for a few
minutes.

[parameters]
tmp_directory=temp
file_database_size=80000000
Figure 2
Required changes to the recv-.ini file

80 MB doesn't actually allow much margin
in the event of signal errors and recovery
attempts. Already, reports have been

Why does MetOp data appear to haltwhen the satellite nears the North Pole?

The data from a full pass can actually betransmitted in slightly less time than
MetOp’s orbital period, resulting in a data
gap between the end of one pass and thestart of the next (remember, the files you
download are all one orbit delayed).

You can use a standard satellite-TV RF
splitter to feed two PCs from a single dishand LNB. You can also get dual-output
LNBs should you wish.
You need to enable PID 510 (decimal) on
your SkyStar by right-clicking on the green
satellite icon then running Setup4PC.
Choose ‘Data services’, uncheck‘Hexadecimal’ then enter '510' in the field tothe left of ‘Insert’ and click the Insert button.
You will also have to add a new datachannel named EPS-10 to yourrecv-channels.ini file.
I very much recommend using a separate
directory for receiving MetOp AVHRR datain order to limit the number of files in eachdirectory. Do not use the wildcard entry [*]as a way of directing all data to a single‘Received’ directory as this reduces yourcontrol over which data are received (andmay flood your PC with unwanted datafrom MetOp). Figure 1 illustrates therequired changes to your recv-channels.ini
file.
[EPS-10]target_directory=received-AVHRR
Figure 1
Modification to the recv-channels.ini file

If it does not already exist by default, it isvital to specify a temporary directory in yourTelliCast system. This is so that the MetOp
files can safely be built up from theincoming packets of data in their own

12

Anders Höök was impressed by the image of the Arctic that appeared in GEO Q12 page 31. Anders has
been experimenting with his R2FX receiver using twin antennas and sent us this infrared APT image
stretching all the way to the North Pole. The satellite was NOAA-18, northbound at 08:37 UT on
December 30 last year (maximum elevation 15°). The second antenna Anders uses is a simplified ‘tall
thin’ QFH type which he will describe in the June GEO Quarterly.

www.geo-web.org.uk

March 2007

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 13

Peter Green
Have you always wanted to receive
world-wide HRPT images? Well you can
now: from Europe's first Polar Orbiting
weather satellite. MetOp-1 is now
transmitting AVHRR test data which isavailable free of charge via EUMETCast.
Elsewhere in this issue you will see
numerous examples of the high quality
images that are now available to you.
Firstly, you will want to know that yoursystem is capable of handling the MetOp
data. A Pentium III 1-GHz or faster PC
is recommended and if you are using
David Taylor's MetOp Manager, thisprogram requires about 100 MB ofmemory for its own operation. In total,
European Polar System (EPS) AVHRR
data will consume from 7 to 14 GB ofyour hard disc storage space per day
depending on the format in which you
save the data. So you need to make surethat your hard disk is big enough to store
this, taking into account the number ofdays worth of data you wish to retain.
Licence
You need to update your licence to beable to receive MetOp. Your next stopshould be the GEO website atwww.geo-web.org.uk/eumreg.html

where you will find a copy of the new
EUMETSAT registration form, which you
require in order to amend your licence(all EUMETCast licences are now done
on-line). GEO has prepared a guide, with
explanations, to filling this out witheverything you need. There is also a link
that, when clicked, will open a new
window with the actual blank on-line
form where you can update your licencedetails to include MetOp.
Updating Your Computer
Whilst waiting for EUMETSAT to informyou that your licence has been updated,
its time to start to get to grips with yourcomputer, adding RAMdisk and updating
the rec.ini and recv-channels.ini files.
It is recommended that you run
RAMdisk, which will help you eliminate
lost segments in your other EUMETCast
programs. If you are already running a
RAMdisk, ensure it is at least 80 MB in
size. Arne van Belle's excellent article
from GEO Q6 June 2005 will help you set
this up; the article has been updated
especially for MetOp and is available online at
http://www.satsignal.eu/
wxsat/atovs/RAMdisk.pdf

Also remember to edit the entry in therecv.ini file to tell the TelliCast software
to use the new size of RAMdisk. 80 MB is
actually 83886080 bytes, but it isadvisable to allow a little margin andspecify just 83500000 bytes for the filesize. Be sure to check the number ofzeros carefully!

recv.ini[locations]......
file_database_directory=Z:\receiving[parameters]......
file_database_size=83500000......
The file may well contain other lines(shown here as ......) which you should
not touch.
RAM Disk Limits
There may be limits on the size of a
RAMdisk using the free AR Soft
RAMdisk product (which you candownload from the Yahoo MSG-1 group,
provided you are a member). There havebeen successful reports of an 80 MB
RAMdisk on a 512MB Windows 2000
system, and a 300 MB RAMdisk on a
2 GB Windows XP system. Arne van
Belle has achieved a 132 MB RAMdisk on
his 1-GB system.
When these values are exceeded though,although the ARsoft product will run, thesize of the RAMdisk turns out to besmaller than configured. If you try to set
an excessively large RAMdisk you obtainan error in the Event Viewer and it fails
to load at all.
Therefore, even though you have plenty
memory, be careful not to set theRAMdisk too large. Setting it to 300 MB
may actually hang your system andrequire you to reboot in Safe Mode toreset the value to a lower level.
Modifying the ‘recv-channels.ini’ File
You need to add a new data channel
named EPS-10 to your recv-channels.ini
file. Most likely, your file will alreadyinclude entries for Meteosat-9 HRIT
data. Just add the entry for EPS as
illustrated below.
——— recv-channels.ini ———[EUMETSAT Data Channel 2]target_directory=received......
......
[EPS-10]target_directory=received-AVHRR......
www.geo-web.org.uk

I recommend using separate directories
for MSG-1 and MetOp AVHRR data tolimit the number of files in any directory.
Do not use the wildcard entry [*] as away of directing all data to a single‘received’ directory: you will lose much of
the control over which data you receive,and may flood your PC with unwanted
data from MetOp! Removing the [*] entry
may be a major change to your recvchannels.ini file, but it's worth it.
Temporary Path
During reception, a file can take up to 30
seconds to build up. If your software
attempts to process such a file before it iscomplete you can end up with a missing
segment. This can be avoided by
specifying a temporary folder (temp)
where files can build up away from themain receiving directory. These files canbe moved to the ‘received’ directory once
each is complete.
——— recv.ini ———[parameters]......
tmp_directory=temp......
[logging]
log_file_size=1000000
log_file_number=2
log_level=quiet......
[locations]......
log_file=>>recv.log......
You should also ensure that the logging
level is set to ‘quiet’ to reduce disk
activity, and also have TelliCast buffer
the log data before writing by using the‘=>>’ specifier in the ‘log_file=’ value. If
this entry is not present in recv.ini bydefault you must add it.
Finally, you also need to enable PID 510
on your SkyStar software using your
Setup4PC program. To do so, right-clickon the green satellite icon and run
Setup4PC, select ‘Data services’ anduncheck ‘Hexadecimal’. Now type '510' in
the field left of the ‘Insert’ button: when
done, click this button.
Conclusions
You should now be in a position toreceive MetOp data when your licence isupdated. I have not found it plain sailingas my RAMdisk has been filling up very
concluded on page 33 ...

13

Les Hamilton
At the conclusion of our editorial last issue, I recommended turning
attention to NOAA infrared images to seek interesting featuresduring the winter months. And even before this edition of theQuarterly was mailed out, John Say had started the ball rolling.
John has been enjoying the NOAA-18 high-resolution images
disseminated through the EUMETCast EARS-AVHRR service [1]and, on November 25, spotted an interesting dark object in the
21:46 UT evening pass. John reported his discovery on the
AVHRR Newsgroup [2] and initiated a lively debate as to its origin.

even more apparent (and twice as long) in the daytime MODIS
image from NASA’s Terra satellite (figure 5, opposite page) datingfrom a few days earlier. The course of the Ob bisects the main
image horizontally before turning northward to complete its journeyto the Arctic Ocean. The circular inset shows the white plume at
the full 250 m/pixel resolution of the MODIS instrument. Becauseof the low elevation of the sun, a dark shadow cast by the plume isclearly visible to its north.

The dark object in question was located at 61°30’N, 73°58’E in thecity of Surgut in central Siberia and took the form of a circular blobwith a curving ‘handle’. What appeared to be a plume of smoke orvapour could be seen trailing westward from the base of the‘handle’. A colour composite IR image made by combining datafrom channel-4 and channel-5 appears in figure 1, which also
depicts the Ob river winding prominently across the scene.

Surgut is not a name that comes readily to mind but it is a major
Siberian city with a population approaching 290 000. Surgut was
founded on the right bank of the Ob river by the Cossacks in 1594,
one of the first cities to be built in Siberia. Present-day Surgut is amajor player in the oil and gas industry and is one of the main
administrative and supply centres for the Western Siberian oil
fields. The basis of its economy is its fuel and energy complex,
which is involved with prospecting, oil and gas-production, pipeline
enterprises, power stations, oil-refining and gas-processing plants:
these collectively employ over 80 000 workers. Over 59 million
tonnes of oil and in excess of 14 billion cubic metres of natural gas
are produced in Surgut annually.

Figure 1 -A channel 4+5 composite IR image from the 21:46 UTNOAA-18 pass on November 25, 2005.
Image: SMIS (http://smis.iki.rssi.ru)

Surgut

All this industry requires energy—lots of it—and the first of two
huge power stations, Surgut Hydroelectric Power Station No 1
(figure 3), was commissioned in February 1972, to be followed a
few years later by Surgut Hydroelectric Power Station No 2
(figure 4). At this time of the year, with the Ob frozen solid, the vastquantities of liquid water required for hydro-electric operations isquite simply unavailable. The Surgut power stations have thecapability to operate as thermal power stations, fuelled by natural
gas—a necessity during winter’s deep freeze—and, with a
combined output of 8000 megawatt (MW), provide electric power
not only for the Tyumen area but a surplus to export to otherregions of Russia as well. Station No.1 also includes two CHP(combined heat and power) units which provide Surgut with thelowest cost municipal heating system in the region.

At this time of year Siberia is in the grip of winter and, withexceptionally high pressure in charge (1043 mb) and cloudlessovernight skies, the outdoor temperature had plummeted to -30°C
and below—ideal conditions for IR imaging. Figure 2 shows thesame image following reprocessing with the Temperature tab inDavid Taylor’s HRPT Reader [3] software. Everything in the scene,including the Ob river, is frozen solid. But the dark blob—the
source of the vapour plume—now stands out as a prominentorange hot-spot, with a temperature of ‘only’ -6°C. The plume is

Figure 3 - Surgut hydroelectric power station No 1 (left)
Figure 4 - Surgut hydroelectric power station No 2 (right)
Credit: RAU UESR

Figure 2 - The same NOAA-18 image, reprocessed to show temperatures

Power Station No 1 is the largest hydro/thermal power station in all
Russia with an output of 4800 MW. This is four times that of theaverage UK power station and exceeds even the huge DRAX
coal-fired power station near Selby, North Yorkshire (3945 MW). It
goes without saying that two adjacent power plants with a
combined output of 8000 MW will burn a huge volume of natural
gas and that their flues will emit vast clouds of steam. The
masthead includes a photograph (courtesy the Surgut municipality)
which shows both stations in operation. There can be little doubtthat the plume in figure 1 represents cloud condensing from thesteam being emitted by the power plants’ five gigantic flue stacks.
... continued on page 16

Figure 5
Central Siberia as imaged by the MODIS instrument
aboard NASA’
NASA’ s Terra satellite at 06:20 UT on November
18, 2006 with Surgut and its
its environs shown at full 250metre resolution (inset).
Image: MODIS Rapid Response Project, NASA/GSFC

GEO Quarterly No 13

Group for Earth Observation

The existence of semi-permanent cloud over power stations has
been chronicled in GEO Quarterly previously [5]. Peter J Bradleylearned that such a cloud he had regularly spotted in France’s
Loire Valley was produced by steam from the cooling towers of a
nuclear power station.
With one mystery solved, another remains: what is the circular
black blob with the curved ‘handle’? Alan Banks was first to make asuggestion after using Google Earth [4] to home in on the Surgut
region. Alan noticed what appeared to be a ‘reservoir’ exactly thesame shape as the dark blob on the NOAA-18 images (figure 6)
and, because it was black it would have to be pretty warm to show
up so well: ‘for this amount of heat there would have to be a pretty
big power station to warm all that water in the middle of Siberia.’

March 2007

Cover and Full-Page Image Details
Front CoverSnow on the Andes is conspicuous in this MetOp-A image
submitted by Alan Banks. This is just a clip from an original
covering the entire continent of South America anddownloaded via EUMETCast’s global data service on
December 2, 2006.
Image © EUMETCAST 2006

Inside Front CoverAn impressive ash plume spews from Mount Etna in thisNovember 24 MODIS image from NASA’s Aqua satellite.
Image: MODIS Rapid Response Team/GSFC

Inside Back Cover
Dozens of active bush fires burn between Lake Eildon andDartmouth Reservoir in Victoria, Australia in this MODIS
image from NASA’s Aqua satellite, on December 11, 2007.
Image: MODIS Rapid Response Team/GSFC

Back Cover
New Zealand is seen surrounded by a semicircle of cloud inthis MetOp-A image dating from 21:25 UT on December 9,
2007. Processing in Vegetation mode by HRPT Reader.
Image © EUMETSAT 2006

Figure 6 - The ‘reservoir’ at Surgut
Image:© 2006 DigitalGlobe/Europe Technologies

Alan Sewards entered the debate with the suggestion that the dark
object might in fact be a cooling pond for the two power plants and thatthe plume might be air warmed by this pond, which was being carriedoff by the wind. Alan continued to say that the pond would not have to
be all liquid as long as it was deep enough for liquid water to exist
throughout the winter. The ice at the surface would be warmer than ice
on adjacent unwarmed soil or river (-6°C as noted above), and would

Page 7
MetOp-A observed Typhoon Utor poised over the Philippines
at 00:58 UT on December 9, 2006. Also clearly in view are theisland of Sulawesi and eastern Borneo.
Image © EUMETSAT 2006

Page 20
This 250-metre resolution MODIS image from NASA’s Aqua
satellite, acquired on November 15 last year, shows bluishplumes of smoke from numerous fires on Australia’s CapeYork peninsula.
NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, GSFC

Figure 7 - The Surgut power stations, with their giant flues evident.
Image:© 2006 DigitalGlobe/Europe Technologies

Page 22
This splendid NOAA-17 image was acquired by David Taylor
at 11:33 UT on December 3, 2006 and shows the first major
storm to his the UK this winter. Many places experienced
winds of well over 100 kph. Editor Les Hamilton was rudely
awakened at 6 am that morning when, with the storm at its
height in NE Scotland, one of his chimneys crashed on to theroof before shattering on the ground below.
Image © EUMETSAT 2006

therefore show up as such on satellite imagery: ‘note that power
stations of this type reject about twice their electrical output as heat into
the cooling ponds and flues; for a 4.8 GW plant this a lot of heat!’
Zooming in ever more closely, the twin power stations soon come into
view, located just at the ‘neck’ of the ‘reservoir’ (figure 7).

Finally, to complete the picture, I checked some summertime
HRPT images, when hydro-electricity generation should have taken
over. And indeed, the great cloud plumes had totally vanished.
References
1
2
3
4
5

GEO Q10, page 7; GEO Q11, page 21.
http://groups.yahoo.com/AVHRR
www.satsignal.eu/
http://earth.google.com
Reflections - GEO Q10, page 38.

Acknowledgements
Thanks to John Say, Alan Banks and Alan Sewards for theircontributions which were instrumental in inspiring this article. Also toDavid Taylor for assistance in processing the MODIS image.

16

Disappointingly, no offers totake up the post of GEO Editor
have yet been received and,
although Les Hamilton has
kindly agreed to continue inpost as an interim measure, thissituation is hardly ideal. This isa post that should appeal to amember who is proficient in
document and image
processing on a personal;
computer, and who would likewww.geo-web.org.uk

to support GEO moreproactively.
Interested parties pleasecontact
Francis Bell,
Coturnix House, Rake Lane,
Milford, Godalming,
Surrey GU8 5AB
England.
Tel:
01483 416 897
email: francis@geo-web.org.uk

March 2007

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 13

Francis Bellwas determined byheadwinds and theposition of the jetstream with the bonus offlying over a sequence of
established airports.

↑

Cape Farewell

It was the Greenland dimension which was
the bonus for me. At home I have received
many APT images which have included thesouthern tip of Greenland but that is close
to the limit of my reception range for the
NOAA satellites. Southern Greenland isoften cloud-covered but some of myimages do show the island’s southern tip
without clouds; but this was scantpreparation for what we saw through acrystal clear atmosphere from an aeroplaneflying at 10,000 metres. We flew just a few
miles south of Cape Farewell, the southern
tip of Greenland, and I was ideally placed
occupying a window seat facing north.
Quite by chance, I had my camera with me
and started to take photographs. Even
though the view was through the engine
exhaust I was subsequently pleased with
Cape Farewell, photographed from the air by the author

Readers may recall the distressing events
which Nadine and I experienced during a
two-way transatlantic crossing weundertook last September [1], when we
encountered one hurricane and badweather almost every day we were at sea.
However, not deterred by this bad
experience, with family plus grandchildren
to be visited before Christmas, we travelled
to America again for a six day visit during
December—but this time by air: London
Gatwick to Raleigh/Duram North Carolina.
A globe and a length of string will identify
the shortest route between these two
airports, a great circle route which takes
the aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean forabout 90% of the flight. However, I wasslightly surprised by the route we actually
took. It was: London, Western Isles of
Scotland, Iceland, the southern tip ofGreenland, Canada and down the easternseaboard of the USA. I expect the route

Southern Greenland, including Cape Farewell, as imaged by the MODIS instrument aboard NASA’s Terra
Earth observing satellite just a few hours earlier at 14:20 UT on December 9, 2006.
The reassembled turnstile antenna

Image: MODIS Rapid Response Team/www.geo-web.org.uk

17

GEO Quarterly No 13

Group for Earth Observation

March 2007

Francis Bell
While in America recently, I visited a‘Discovery Channel’ shop where, whilebrowsing around, I found a small but
interesting selection of books on sale. One bookwhich particularly caught my eye was entitled‘The Weather Identification Handbook’. The
book looked informative and was attractively
illustrated so I decided to buy it. It was only
after I’d made that decision that I noticed
Storm Dunlop’s name as the author. This
name registered with me because Storm is a
GEO member.

This NOAA-17 image captured by the author on December 9, 2006 shows a spectacular swatheof snow stretching southwest from Lake Michigan

the results. The cabin staff saw what I
was doing and one remarked that she
had never seen such a clear view ofCape Farewell all the times she had
flown this route.
In the foreground were rocky islands
surrounded by a smooth, black glassy
sea which created many inlets, and in
the background were mountains which I
took to be mainland Greenland. Theseislands were 90% covered in snow andice, the remainder barren rock. I thinkthat the sea must have recently beenfrozen, keeping it wave free and, with nosnow cover, it looked black. Although
the scene looked beautiful and stark inthe sunlight, it also appeared
inhospitable and devoid of life. No
wonder departing visitors to Greenland
were happy to call this place Cape
Farewell.
On reaching our son’s home in North
Carolina I set up my APT receiving
station, which consisted of a GEO
turnstile antenna, a Dartcom preamp, a
Ray Godden designed RX2 receiver anda Dell laptop computer. Before leaving
home I did experiment with different
antennas but my empirical tests
indicated none performed as well as theturnstile. The problem was that theturnstile would not fit into my suitcase: I
had to take it apart to fit and thenreassemble it on site. The site for theantenna was not ideal as the house
where we were staying is located in agentle valley surrounded by trees and I
could only conveniently locate theantenna six feet above the ground.
However, the system did work well forhigh elevation satellite passes.

18

I recorded passes on most days, thenear midday passes of NOAA-17 and
NOAA-18 producing some good results
using the visible light channel, eventhough the early December light levels,
in full sunlight at high latitudes, is not
ideal. I noted the lack of interference for
NOAA-18 on 137.91 MHz—there are no
pagers on this frequency in the USA.
The prevailing weather we experienced
in North Carolina was not typical for
December. Cold, clear polar air was
sweeping down from Canada andpushing most of the weather and clouds
well to the south generating a clear
landmass for the satellites to image.
Without overlaying country and stateboundaries my images had to be viewed
with care to identify particular locations.
It was interesting to look at the riverpatterns and other water masses tonavigate around these images of theUSA. The European images which I am
used to have, of course, so many
coastal features that it is usuallypossible to identify locations without theuse of a map overlay. A white band on
the image stretching from the southern
tip of Lake Michigan for several hundred
miles was, I’m sure, recent snow coveras the sinuous rivers are visible against
the general white background.
Editor’s Note
We are always please to hear about
members experiences at temporary
locations, holiday or work related.
Please keep the reports and images
coming in.
Reference
1 Atlantic - GEO Q12, page 43

www.geo-web.org.uk

I have read the book and found it very
informative and well presented. The first thirdof the book is devoted to cloud classification.
The author’s advice is to become familiar withbasic cloud types followed by the different
forms which they can exhibit. This corematerial is well illustrated with tables andphotographs. The remainder of the book is
fascinating with its illustrations andexplanations of many different atmosphericphenomena related to clouds, precipitation,light and weather. I was particularlyinterested in the author’s comments about
rainbows by moonlight and aircraft contrails,
both topics which have been discussed in GEO
Quarterlies. The book contains sections on• Cloud Classification• Cloud Formation• Optical Phenomena• Colour in the Sky• Visibility• Precipitation• Winds• Severe Weather• Weather.
I would certainly recommend this book toanybody interested in clouds and the weather.
My copy came from the USA and cost $16.95,
equivalent to about £9.00. The book may or
may not be on the shelves of UK book shops
but, when I asked my local book shop andWaterstones, both said they could get it in forme. I expect there would be some additional
cost for an individual order. The details of thebook are:‘The Weather Identification Handbook’, by Storm
DunlopPaperback, 192 pages.
First published by Harper Collins (UK 2002)
Now published by Lyons Press (USA 2004)

ISBN 1-58574-857-9
Price £7.76 at Amazon.co.uk
This book is well worth putting on a birthday or
Christmas present list. I understand the sameauthor has four other related books in print but I
have not seen these. Storm has been invited to
our Leicester symposium and I hope to learn
more from him there.

March 2007

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 13

For some months now, GEO Management
have been negotiating behind the scenes
to organise a visit to the nerve centre ofweather satellite operations in Europe. The
outcome is an outstanding opportunity for
GEO members to visit EUMETSAT’s HQ in
Darmstadt, Germany. Additionally, we areplanning visits to other nearby spacecentres including the receiving groundstation at Usingen. The two-day visit isplanned for Thursday-Friday, July 5-6,
2007.
Provisional ProgrammeThursday, July 5
Commencing at 9.00 am, EUMETSAT will
host us for a full day at their headquartersin Darmstadt. This will include:• A tour of the control centre• A tour of the archive facilities• Some presentations, including- The status of EUMETSAT’s Operational
Services- Getting the most out of MSG data
- Unwrapping the mystery of EPS• Lunch at some stage• A chance to meet EUMETSAT staff• Our own GEO meeting if judged
appropriate.

Friday, July 6
At 8.00 am we will depart for Usingen,escorted by a member of EUMETSAT’s
staff, a drive of about an hour and a half.
Usingen is the location for EUMETSAT’s
satellite receiving ground station where wehope to have access to the control
buildings for the MSG antenna as well as a
general tour of the site.
In the afternoon we will return to Darmstadt
to visit ESA’s European Space Operations
Centre (ESOC). We will have an escorted
tour of their site and facilities. The visit willconclude at 4.00 pm.
Travel, Accommodation etc.
GEO is making no charge for the two-day
programme but all travel, accommodation,
meals and other expenses are theresponsibility of individual delegates. Any
GEO member from the UK or continental
Europe will be welcome, together with theirpartner.
Coordination
Peter Green is coordinating the group list.
To register your interest in this unique
event, please email your details to Peter atinternational@geo-web.org.uk

EUMETSAT HQ, Darmstadt
Image: EUMETSAT

Further information will be published on the
GEO website as it becomes available.
Group travel and group accommodation
may be possible but are not guaranteed at
this stage. If numbers have to be limited,
selection will have to be in favour of theearly registrations.
Stay with GEO at the Darmstadt Ibis HotelGEO has reserved a number of rooms formembers at the Ibis Hotel, Darmstadt from
July 4-7, for our visit to EUMETSAT and
ESOC. EUMETSAT is within walking
distance of the hotel, so no transport isrequired.
We do hope that all those wishing to attend
will stay at the hotel, where we will be very
pleased meet our members from mainland
Europe.
The room rates per night:• Monday-Friday: €65• Friday-Monday: €59• Breakfast per person extra: €9.50 per
day
These rates include all taxes and service
charges. You may of course book for a longer
or shorter stay.
All of the 84 air-conditioned guest rooms
feature shower/WC, satellite television,
telephone, and modem connection.

Please book direct with the hotel
quoting reference 47537 GEO
Steffi Horstmann, Manager
Ibis Darmstadt, Kasinostraße 6
D – 64293 Darmstadt
Tel: (49) 06151 / 397-00
Fax: (49) 06151 / 397-0123
Email: H3287@accor-hotels.com
www.geo-web.org.uk

GEO looks forward to renewing old
acquaintances and making new friends at
Darmstadt. We are sure that everyone who
attends will experience a very enjoyable andexciting few days.

Fires on Cape York
Peninsula
The 250-metre resolution MODIS image
on page 20 (overleaf) depicts Australia’s
Cape York peninsula as viewed by
NASA’s Aqua satellite on November 15
last year.
This region is mainly tropical savannah,a mixture of grassland, shrubs and small
trees with a thin perimeter of tropicalforest lining the coastal areas. Bothtraditional Aboriginal land owners andmodern farmers and ranchers use fire to
maintain this landscape and bluishplumes of smoke from numerous fires
burning across the peninsula are clearlyvisible—quite distinct from the confetti ofbright cotton wool clouds dotting theimage.
Places where the savannahs haverecently burned show as deep brown,compared with the lighter tan colour of
the unburned terrain and the deep greenof the tropical forests. Skies over the Gulf
of Carpentaria are hazy, probably a
mixture of smoke and thin clouds.
NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team,
Goddard Space Flight Center.

19

March 2007

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 13

Les Hamilton
In the week leading up to last Christmas,
England found itself under the influenceof a persistent area of high pressure
which brought freezing fog to many partsof the country, severely disrupting air
travel.
Particularly badly hit was London’sHeathrow airport where all domestic
flights were cancelled several days in a
row and international flights wereseriously curtailed. In all, many
hundreds of flights (40% of all scheduled)were abandoned leaving tens of
thousands of would-be passengers
stranded.
Graham Whitehead sent us the
MetOp-A image opposite which clearlyshows the fog enshrouding the capitaland Midlands. Alan Banks also received
this image and was sharp-eyed enough tospot the vapour plumes from a group of
power stations, starkly highlighted by
the low angle of the sun. Careful
examination of the area immediately
surrounding the Humber estuary shows
five vapour plumes, all trailingsoutheastward. The enlarged image
below shows them in greater detail andthey are identified on the sketch map.
The power stations, five of England’s
largest coal-fired plants, are: Ferrybridge(1955 MW), Eggsborough (1960 MW),
Drax (3870 MW), West Burton(1972 MW) and Cottam (2008 MW).

Enlargement from main image showing
the power station vapour plumes

Graham Whitehead provided this splendid 10:25 UT December 20 image from MetOp-A. The image wascaptured via EUMETCast using David Taylor’s MetOp Manager, and HRPT Reader software then enhancedwith Adobe Photoshop.
Image © EUMETSAT 2006

Member’s Advertisement
For Sale:Timestep Proscan Weather Satellite Receiver 4.1 with all APT frequencies
fitted and in excellent working condition, including speaker and PC Lead —£100.00. If interested, please contact Mike Stevens at:

mikeg4cfz@tiscali.co.uk
Locations of the five power stations

www.geo-web.org.uk

21

March 2007

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 13

GEO PIC 1.0 for the RX2
Programmed with the
new channel frequencies
required for NOAA-18.
UK
Continental Europe
Rest of World

-

£7.00
£7.80
£8.40

GEO/Dartcom EPROM v 1.3
This new EPROM forthe Dartcom APT
receiver is available
exclusively from GEO.

Telestar 80 cm dish and Universal
0.6 dB LNB

R2FX APT Weather Satellite ReceiverThis diminutive German-built APT receiver is packed with features and is the ideal
receiver for the newcomer to the hobby. May be affected by pagers on the upper
NOAA frequency of 137.91 MHz.
UK member’s price
UK non-member’s price-(or similar model)
A quality German made aluminium dishand LNB with an AZ/EL mount to fit onto avertical pole. (Wall or patio mounts areavailable from local satellite TV dealers)
UK members price£49.00
UK non-members price£56.00UK
Continental Europe
Rest of World-£10.00£10.75£11.25

Martelec MSR40 EPROM
UK
Continental Europe
Rest of World-£10.00£10.75£11.25£135.00£149.00

Ordering and Shipping

R2FX Accessory Pack
This contains everything required to implement a complete APT receiving system
when used with the R2FX receiver. It comprises:• 137 MHz Turnstile Antenna• UK plug-in power supply• PC audio lead + PC Serial ‘computer control’ lead
• Aerial lead (20 m with fitted connector)• CD of PC shareware starter software• Instructions

We will ship by post, so please allow a
few days for items to arrive in Europe
and perhaps a few weeks for the Rest of
the World.

Orders should be sent to:

What if you are not a GEO
Member?
GEO can provide most of the items
advertised (with the exception of GEO
Quarterly back-issues and CDs) to both
members and non members. However,the latter cannot benefit from thediscounted prices available to members.

GEO Shop,
We do not normally ship outside the UK as this receiver should be available
elsewhere more cheaply from the manufacturer. But contact the GEO Shop if you
wish a quote.
UK member’s price - £59.00
UK non-member’s price - £69.00

44 Disraeli Road
Christchurch BH23 3NB
Dorset, England
If you are paying by credit card, you can
FAX us your order to:+44 (0) 1202 893 323

Why not join GEO andtake advantage of the
discounted prices we
can offer members.
Subscription Rates (12 months/4 issuesof GEO Quarterly) are just £18 (UK),£21 (EU) and £24 (rest of world).

GEO Members’ PRICE LIST
Members Prices
UK
EU RoW

Non Members
UK
EU RoW

135.00- 147.00
59.00
259.00 279.00
37.50
7.00
7.80
8.40
10.00 10.75 11.25
10.00 10.75 11.25

149.00- 161.00
69.00
279.00 299.00
42.50
7.00
7.80
8.40
10.00 10.75 11.25
10.00 10.75 11.25

53.50 55.00
94.50 113.50
49.00
11.00 12.50
21.50 24.50

59.50 61.00
119.50 123.50
56.00
17.50 19.00
24.50 27.50

APT Equipment
TechniSat SkyStar 2 PCI Card
This 'free-to-air' DVB satellite TV and data
receivercard
recommended
by
EUMETSAT must be installed inside yourcomputer. It comes with comprehensive
installation instructions and a CD-ROM ofdriver software (if you do not feel confident
about installing cards inside yourcomputer, we recommend the USB version
above)UK members price- £53.50
UK non-members price- £59.50

TechniSat SatFinder
Antenna Alignment Meter
This sensitive meter is a great help insetting up and aligning the dish for
maximum signal. The meter comes with full
instructions.
UK members price
UK non-member’s price- £21.50- £24.50

R2FX APT Receiver (no PSU)
R2FX Accessory Pack
Dartcom high quality QFH antenna
Turnstile APT antenna
GEO- PIC 1.0
GEO/Dartcom EPROM v 1.3
Martelec MSR40 EPROM

EUMETCast Equipment
TechniSat SkyStar 2 PCI Card
Technisat Skystar USB box
Telestar 80 cm dish with LNB
Telestar Ku band universal LNB
Technisat Satfinder alignment meter--

MiscellaneousTechniSat SkyStar 2 USB BoxThis external 'free-to-air' DVB satellite TV
and data receiver plugs into a USB port onyour computer and comes complete withpower supply, USB cable and a CD-ROMof driver software.
UK£94.50Continental Europe- £119.50

Telestar Universal Ku-band 0.6 dB
Universal LNB(or similar model)
Digital satellite TV Universal LNB for use
with the SkyStar receivers above or any
DVB satellite TV receiver.
UK members price£11.00Continental Europe£17.50GEO Quarterly Back Issues
3.50
4.20
5.10
(subject to availability)
GEO 2004 CD (PDF back issues)
8.00
8.80
9.30
GEO 2005 CD (PDF back issues)
8.00
8.80
9.30
GEO 2006 CD (PDF back issues)
8.00
8.80
9.30
GEO Membership (4 x GEO Quarterly) 20.00 24.00 28.00

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
20.00 24.00 28.00

All prices are in £ sterling and include postage and packaging

www.geo-web.org.uk

i

NOAA 12137.50 MHz

NOAA 15137.50 MHz

Mar 01 05:33 07:13 15:22 17:02
Mar 02 05:08 06:48 14:58 16:37
Mar 03 04:43 06:23 16:12 17:53
Mar 04 05:58 07:38 15:48 17:28
Mar 05 05:34 07:14 15:23 17:03
Mar 06 05:09 06:49 14:59 16:38
Mar 07 04:44 06:24 16:13 17:54
Mar 08 06:00 07:40 15:49 17:29
Mar 09 05:35 07:15 15:24 17:04
Mar 10 05:10 06:50 15:00 16:39
Mar 11 04:46 06:25 16:14 17:55
Mar 12 06:01 07:41 15:50 17:30
Mar 13 05:36 07:16 15:25 17:05
Mar 14 05:11 06:51 15:01 16:40
Mar 15 04:47 06:26 16:15 17:57
Mar 16 06:02 07:42 15:51 17:31
Mar 17 05:37 07:17 15:27 17:06
Mar 18 05:12 06:52 15:02 16:41
Mar 19 04:48 06:28 16:17 17:58
Mar 20 06:03 07:43 15:52 17:32
Mar 21 05:38 07:18 15:28 17:07
Mar 22 05:14 06:53 15:03 16:42
Mar 23 04:49 06:29 16:18 17:59
Mar 24 06:04 07:44 15:53 17:34
Mar 25 05:39 07:19 15:29 17:08
Mar 26 05:15 06:55 15:05 16:43
Mar 27 04:50 06:30 14:40 16:19
Mar 28 06:05 07:45 15:54 17:35
Mar 29 05:40 07:20 15:30 17:10
Mar 30 05:16 06:56 15:06 16:45
Mar 31 04:51 06:31 14:42 16:20

05:49 07:29 15:39 17:19
05:25 07:05 15:15 16:55
05:02 06:41 14:52 16:31
06:18 07:58 16:07 17:48
05:54 07:34 15:43 17:23
05:30 07:10 15:20 16:59
05:06 06:46 14:57 16:35
06:22 08:02 16:12 17:53
05:58 07:39 15:48 17:28
05:35 07:15 15:25 17:04
05:11 06:51 15:01 16:40
06:27 08:07 16:16 17:57
06:03 07:43 15:53 17:33
05:39 07:20 15:29 17:09
05:16 06:56 15:06 16:45
04:52 06:32 16:21 18:02
06:08 07:48 15:57 17:38
05:44 07:24 15:34 17:14
05:20 07:00 15:11 16:50
04:57 06:37 16:26 18:07
06:13 07:53 16:02 17:43
05:49 07:29 15:39 17:18
05:25 07:05 15:15 16:54
05:01 06:41 14:52 16:31
06:17 07:58 16:07 17:48
05:54 07:34 15:43 17:23
05:30 07:10 15:20 16:59
05:06 06:46 14:57 16:35
06:22 08:02 16:12 17:52
05:58 07:38 15:48 17:28
05:35 07:15 15:25 17:04

11:04 12:44 20:54 22:34 01:36 03:17 11:32 13:12
10:41 12:21 20:31 22:11 01:26 03:07 11:21 13:01
10:18 11:58 20:08 21:48 01:15 02:56 11:11 12:51
09:55 11:35 19:46 21:24 01:05 02:46 11:01 12:41
11:12 12:52 21:01 22:42 02:35 04:17 12:30 14:12
10:49 12:29 20:39 22:19 02:25 04:06 12:20 14:02
10:26 12:06 20:16 21:55 02:15 03:56 12:10 13:51
10:03 11:43 19:53 21:32 02:04 03:45 12:00 13:41
09:40 11:20 21:09 22:50 01:54 03:35 11:49 13:30
10:57 12:37 20:46 22:27 01:44 03:25 11:39 13:20
10:33 12:14 20:24 22:03 01:33 03:14 11:29 13:09
10:10 11:50 20:01 21:40 01:23 03:04 11:19 12:59
09:47 11:27 19:39 21:17 01:13 02:54 11:09 12:48
11:04 12:45 20:54 22:35 01:03 02:43 12:38 14:20
10:41 12:21 20:31 22:11 02:33 04:14 12:28 14:10
10:18 11:58 20:09 21:48 02:23 04:04 12:18 13:59
09:55 11:35 19:46 21:25 02:12 03:53 12:07 13:49
11:12 12:52 21:02 22:43 02:02 03:43 11:57 13:38
10:49 12:29 20:39 22:19 01:52 03:33 11:47 13:28
10:26 12:06 20:16 21:56 01:41 03:22 11:37 13:17
10:03 11:43 19:54 21:33 01:31 03:12 11:27 13:07
09:40 11:20 21:10 22:51 01:21 03:01 11:17 12:56
10:57 12:37 20:47 22:27 01:10 02:51 11:06 12:46
10:34 12:14 20:24 22:04 02:41 04:22 12:36 14:18
10:11 11:51 20:01 21:40 02:30 04:11 12:25 14:07
09:48 11:28 19:39 21:17 02:20 04:01 12:15 13:57
11:05 12:45 20:54 22:35 02:10 03:51 12:05 13:46
10:42 12:22 20:32 22:12 01:59 03:40 11:55 13:35
10:19 11:59 20:09 21:48 01:49 03:30 11:44 13:25
09:56 11:36 19:46 21:25 01:39 03:20 11:34 13:15
11:12 12:53 21:02 22:43 01:28 03:09 11:24 13:04

May 01 05:25 07:05 15:14 16:53
May 02 05:00 06:40 14:50 16:29
May 03 06:15 07:55 16:04 17:45
May 04 05:50 07:30 15:40 17:20
May 05 05:26 07:06 15:15 16:55
May 06 05:01 06:41 14:51 16:30
May 07 06:16 07:56 16:05 17:46
May 08 05:52 07:32 15:41 17:21
May 09 05:27 07:07 15:16 16:56
May 10 05:02 06:42 14:52 16:31
May 11 06:17 07:57 16:06 17:47
May 12 05:53 07:33 15:42 17:22
May 13 05:28 07:08 15:18 16:57
May 14 05:03 06:43 14:53 16:32
May 15 06:18 07:59 16:07 17:48
May 16 05:54 07:34 15:43 17:23
May 17 05:29 07:09 15:19 16:58
May 18 05:04 06:44 14:54 16:33
May 19 06:20 08:00 16:08 17:49
May 20 05:55 07:35 15:44 17:24
May 21 05:30 07:10 15:20 16:59
May 22 05:06 06:45 14:56 16:34
May 23 06:21 08:01 16:10 17:50
May 24 05:56 07:36 15:45 17:25
May 25 05:31 07:11 15:21 17:00
May 26 05:07 06:47 14:57 16:35
May 27 06:22 08:02 16:11 17:52
May 28 05:57 07:37 15:46 17:26
May 29 05:32 07:12 15:22 17:01
May 30 05:08 06:48 14:58 16:36
May 31 06:23 08:03 16:12 17:53

04:56 06:36 14:47 16:25 10:58 12:38 20:48 22:28
06:12 07:53 16:02 17:42 10:35 12:15 20:25 22:05
05:49 07:29 15:38 17:18 10:12 11:52 20:02 21:41
05:25 07:05 15:15 16:54 09:49 11:29 19:40 21:18
05:01 06:41 14:52 16:30 11:06 12:46 20:55 22:36
06:17 07:57 16:06 17:47 10:43 12:23 20:33 22:13
05:53 07:33 15:43 17:23 10:20 12:00 20:10 21:49
05:30 07:10 15:19 16:59 09:57 11:37 19:47 21:26
05:06 06:46 14:56 16:35 11:14 12:54 21:03 22:44
06:22 08:02 16:11 17:52 10:50 12:31 20:40 22:21
05:58 07:38 15:48 17:28 10:27 12:08 20:18 21:57
05:34 07:14 15:24 17:04 10:04 11:44 19:55 21:34
05:10 06:50 15:01 16:40 09:41 11:21 21:11 22:52
04:47 06:27 16:16 17:57 10:58 12:38 20:48 22:28
06:03 07:43 15:52 17:33 10:35 12:15 20:25 22:05
05:39 07:19 15:29 17:08 10:12 11:52 20:03 21:42
05:15 06:55 15:05 16:44 09:49 11:29 19:40 21:19
04:51 06:31 16:21 18:02 11:06 12:46 20:56 22:36
06:07 07:48 15:57 17:37 10:43 12:23 20:33 22:13
05:44 07:24 15:33 17:13 10:20 12:00 20:10 21:50
05:20 07:00 15:10 16:49 09:57 11:37 19:48 21:26
04:56 06:36 14:47 16:25 11:14 12:54 21:03 22:44
06:12 07:52 16:02 17:42 10:51 12:31 20:41 22:21
05:48 07:28 15:38 17:18 10:28 12:08 20:18 21:57
05:25 07:05 15:15 16:54 10:05 11:45 19:55 21:34
05:01 06:41 14:51 16:30 09:42 11:22 21:11 22:52
06:17 07:57 16:06 17:47 10:59 12:39 20:48 22:29
05:53 07:33 15:43 17:23 10:35 12:16 20:25 22:05
05:29 07:09 15:19 16:59 10:12 11:53 20:03 21:42
05:05 06:45 14:56 16:35 09:49 11:29 19:40 21:19
06:22 08:02 16:11 17:52 11:06 12:47 20:56 22:37

01:10 02:51 11:06 12:46
02:41 04:22 12:35 14:18
02:30 04:11 12:25 14:07
02:20 04:01 12:15 13:56
02:09 03:50 12:05 13:46
01:59 03:40 11:54 13:35
01:49 03:30 11:44 13:25
01:38 03:19 11:34 13:14
01:28 03:09 11:24 13:04
01:18 02:59 11:14 12:53
01:07 02:48 11:04 12:43
02:38 04:19 12:33 14:15
02:27 04:08 12:22 14:04
02:17 03:58 12:12 13:54
02:07 03:48 12:02 13:43
01:56 03:37 11:52 13:33
01:46 03:27 11:42 13:22
01:36 03:17 11:31 13:12
01:25 03:06 11:21 13:01
01:15 02:56 11:11 12:51
01:05 02:45 11:01 12:40
02:35 04:16 12:30 14:12
02:25 04:06 12:20 14:01
02:14 03:55 12:09 13:51
02:04 03:45 11:59 13:40
01:54 03:35 11:49 13:30
01:43 03:24 11:39 13:19
01:33 03:14 11:29 13:09
01:23 03:03 11:19 12:58
01:12 02:53 11:08 12:48
01:02 02:43 04:24 12:38

Apr 01 06:06 07:46 15:55 17:36
Apr 02 05:42 07:22 15:31 17:11
Apr 03 05:17 06:57 15:07 16:46
Apr 04 04:52 06:32 14:43 16:21
Apr 05 06:07 07:47 15:56 17:37
Apr 06 05:43 07:23 15:32 17:12
Apr 07 05:18 06:58 15:08 16:47
Apr 08 04:53 06:33 14:44 16:22
Apr 09 06:08 07:49 15:58 17:38
Apr 10 05:44 07:24 15:33 17:13
Apr 11 05:19 06:59 15:09 16:48
Apr 12 04:54 06:34 14:45 16:23
Apr 13 06:10 07:50 15:59 17:39
Apr 14 05:45 07:25 15:34 17:14
Apr 15 05:20 07:00 15:10 16:49
Apr 16 04:56 06:35 14:46 16:24
Apr 17 06:11 07:51 16:00 17:40
Apr 18 05:46 07:26 15:35 17:15
Apr 19 05:21 07:01 15:11 16:50
Apr 20 04:57 06:37 14:47 16:25
Apr 21 06:12 07:52 16:01 17:41
Apr 22 05:47 07:27 15:36 17:16
Apr 23 05:22 07:02 15:12 16:51
Apr 24 04:58 06:38 14:48 16:26
Apr 25 06:13 07:53 16:02 17:43
Apr 26 05:48 07:28 15:37 17:17
Apr 27 05:24 07:03 15:13 16:52
Apr 28 04:59 06:39 14:49 16:28
Apr 29 06:14 07:54 16:03 17:44
Apr 30 05:49 07:29 15:39 17:18

05:11 06:51 15:01 16:40
04:47 06:27 16:16 17:57
06:03 07:43 15:53 17:33
05:39 07:19 15:29 17:09
05:16 06:56 15:06 16:45
04:52 06:32 16:21 18:02
06:08 07:48 15:57 17:38
05:44 07:24 15:34 17:13
05:20 07:00 15:10 16:49
04:57 06:36 16:26 18:07
06:13 07:53 16:02 17:43
05:49 07:29 15:38 17:18
05:25 07:05 15:15 16:54
05:01 06:41 14:52 16:30
06:17 07:57 16:07 17:47
05:53 07:34 15:43 17:23
05:30 07:10 15:20 16:59
05:06 06:46 14:56 16:35
06:22 08:02 16:11 17:52
05:58 07:38 15:48 17:28
05:34 07:14 15:24 17:04
05:11 06:51 15:01 16:40
04:47 06:27 16:16 17:57
06:03 07:43 15:52 17:33
05:39 07:19 15:29 17:09
05:15 06:55 15:06 16:45
04:52 06:32 16:21 18:02
06:08 07:48 15:57 17:38
05:44 07:24 15:34 17:13
05:20 07:00 15:10 16:49

10:49 12:30 20:39 22:20 01:18 02:59 11:14 12:54
10:26 12:06 20:17 21:56 01:08 02:49 11:04 12:43
10:03 11:43 19:54 21:33 02:38 04:19 12:33 14:15
09:40 11:20 21:10 22:51 02:28 04:09 12:23 14:04
10:57 12:37 20:47 22:27 02:17 03:58 12:12 13:54
10:34 12:14 20:24 22:04 02:07 03:48 12:02 13:43
10:11 11:51 20:02 21:41 01:57 03:38 11:52 13:33
09:48 11:28 19:39 21:18 01:46 03:27 11:42 13:22
11:05 12:45 20:55 22:35 01:36 03:17 11:32 13:12
10:42 12:22 20:32 22:12 01:26 03:07 11:22 13:01
10:19 11:59 20:09 21:49 01:15 02:56 11:11 12:51
09:56 11:36 19:47 21:25 01:05 02:46 11:01 12:41
11:13 12:53 21:02 22:43 02:36 04:17 12:30 14:12
10:50 12:30 20:40 22:20 02:25 04:06 12:20 14:02
10:27 12:07 20:17 21:56 02:15 03:56 12:10 13:51
10:04 11:44 19:54 21:33 02:04 03:45 12:00 13:41
09:41 11:21 21:10 22:51 01:54 03:35 11:49 13:30
10:58 12:38 20:47 22:28 01:44 03:25 11:39 13:20
10:35 12:15 20:25 22:04 01:33 03:14 11:29 13:09
10:11 11:52 20:02 21:41 01:23 03:04 11:19 12:59
09:49 11:28 19:39 21:18 01:13 02:54 11:09 12:48
11:05 12:46 20:55 22:36 01:02 02:43 10:59 12:38
10:42 12:22 20:32 22:12 02:33 04:14 12:28 14:10
10:19 11:59 20:10 21:49 02:22 04:04 12:18 13:59
09:56 11:36 19:47 21:26 02:12 03:53 12:07 13:49
11:13 12:53 21:03 22:44 02:02 03:43 11:57 13:38
10:50 12:30 20:40 22:20 01:51 03:32 11:47 13:27
10:27 12:07 20:17 21:57 01:41 03:22 11:37 13:17
10:04 11:44 19:55 21:34 01:31 03:12 11:27 13:07
09:41 11:21 21:11 22:52 01:20 03:01 11:16 12:56

Jun 01 05:58 07:38 15:47 17:27
Jun 02 05:33 07:13 15:23 17:02
Jun 03 05:09 06:49 14:59 16:38
Jun 04 06:24 08:04 16:13 17:54
Jun 05 05:59 07:39 15:48 17:29
Jun 06 05:35 07:15 15:24 17:03
Jun 07 05:10 06:50 15:00 16:39
Jun 08 06:25 08:05 16:14 17:55
Jun 09 06:00 07:40 15:49 17:30
Jun 10 05:36 07:16 15:25 17:05
Jun 11 05:11 06:51 15:01 16:40
Jun 12 04:46 06:26 16:15 17:56
Jun 13 06:01 07:41 15:51 17:31
Jun 14 05:37 07:17 15:26 17:06
Jun 15 05:12 06:52 15:02 16:41
Jun 16 04:47 06:27 16:16 17:57
Jun 17 06:02 07:43 15:52 17:32
Jun 18 05:38 07:18 15:27 17:07
Jun 19 05:13 06:53 15:03 16:42
Jun 20 04:49 06:28 16:17 17:58
Jun 21 06:04 07:44 15:53 17:33
Jun 22 05:39 07:19 15:28 17:08
Jun 23 05:14 06:54 15:04 16:43
Jun 24 04:50 06:29 16:18 17:59
Jun 25 06:05 07:45 15:54 17:34
Jun 26 05:40 07:20 15:29 17:09
Jun 27 05:15 06:55 15:05 16:44
Jun 28 04:51 06:30 16:19 18:00
Jun 29 06:06 07:46 15:55 17:35
Jun 30 05:41 07:21 15:30 17:10

05:58 07:38 15:47 17:28 10:43 12:23 20:33 22:13
05:34 07:14 15:24 17:03 10:20 12:00 20:10 21:50
05:10 06:50 15:01 16:39 09:57 11:37 19:48 21:27
04:46 06:26 16:16 17:57 09:34 11:14 21:04 22:45
06:02 07:43 15:52 17:32 10:51 12:31 20:41 22:21
05:39 07:19 15:28 17:08 10:28 12:08 20:18 21:58
05:15 06:55 15:05 16:44 10:05 11:45 19:56 21:35
04:51 06:31 16:20 18:02 09:42 11:22 21:11 22:53
06:07 07:47 15:57 17:37 10:59 12:39 20:49 22:29
05:43 07:23 15:33 17:13 10:36 12:16 20:26 22:06
05:20 07:00 15:10 16:49 10:13 11:53 20:03 21:42
04:56 06:36 14:47 16:25 09:50 11:30 19:41 21:19
06:12 07:52 16:01 17:42 11:07 12:47 20:56 22:37
05:48 07:28 15:38 17:18 10:43 12:24 20:33 22:14
05:24 07:04 15:14 16:54 10:20 12:01 20:11 21:50
05:00 06:40 14:51 16:30 09:57 11:37 19:48 21:27
06:17 07:57 16:06 17:47 09:34 11:14 21:04 22:45
05:53 07:33 15:42 17:22 10:51 12:31 20:41 22:21
05:29 07:09 15:19 16:58 10:28 12:08 20:18 21:58
05:05 06:45 14:56 16:34 10:05 11:45 19:56 21:35
06:21 08:01 16:11 17:52 09:42 11:22 21:12 22:53
05:57 07:38 15:47 17:27 10:59 12:39 20:49 22:29
05:34 07:14 15:24 17:03 10:36 12:16 20:26 22:06
05:10 06:50 15:00 16:39 10:13 11:53 20:03 21:43
04:46 06:26 16:15 17:56 09:50 11:30 19:41 21:19
06:02 07:42 15:52 17:32 11:07 12:47 20:56 22:37
05:38 07:18 15:28 17:08 10:44 12:24 20:34 22:14
05:14 06:54 15:05 16:44 10:21 12:01 20:11 21:50
04:51 06:31 16:20 18:01 09:58 11:38 19:48 21:27
06:07 07:47 15:56 17:37 09:35 11:14 21:04 22:45

02:32 04:13 12:27 14:09
02:22 04:03 12:17 13:59
02:12 03:53 12:07 13:48
02:01 03:42 11:57 13:37
01:51 03:32 11:46 13:27
01:41 03:22 11:36 13:16
01:30 03:11 11:26 13:06
01:20 03:01 11:16 12:56
01:10 02:50 11:06 12:45
02:40 04:21 12:35 14:17
02:30 04:11 12:25 14:06
02:19 04:00 12:14 13:56
02:09 03:50 12:04 13:45
01:59 03:40 11:54 13:35
01:48 03:29 11:44 13:24
01:38 03:19 11:33 13:14
01:27 03:08 11:23 13:03
01:17 02:58 11:13 12:53
01:07 02:48 11:03 12:42
02:37 04:18 12:32 14:14
02:27 04:08 12:22 14:04
02:17 03:58 12:12 13:53
02:06 03:47 12:01 13:42
01:56 03:37 11:51 13:32
01:45 03:26 11:41 13:21
01:35 03:16 11:31 13:11
01:25 03:06 11:21 13:00
01:14 02:55 11:10 12:50
01:04 02:45 11:00 12:40
02:35 04:16 12:29 14:11

ii

NOAA 17137.62 MHz

NOAA 18
137.91 MHzNOAA 12137.50 MHz

NOAA 15137.50 MHz

NOAA 17137.62 MHz

You can download a PDF version of these predictions from: http://www.geo-web.org.uk/predictions.pdf

NOAA 18
137.91 MHz

March 2007

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Helplines
Douglas Deans, Dunblane, Perthshire, SCOTLAND
All aspects of weather satellites from APT, HRPT to Meteosat-8 DVB/EUMETCast systems.
• telephone:(01786) 82 28 28• e-mail: dsdeans@tiscali.co.uk
John Tellick, Surbiton, Surrey, ENGLAND
Meteosat-8 advice - registering for the various MSG services, hardware and software installation andtroubleshooting. John will also field general queries about any aspect of receiving weather satellite
transmissions.
• telephone: (0208) 390 3315
• e-mail: info@geo-web.org.uk
Keith Holland, London, ENGLAND
Specifically, help for APT users (137 MHz band).
• e-mail: geo@koholland.plus.com
David Strickland, Truro, Cornwall, ENGLANDDavid has set up his own wireless network system of three computers. He has interests in electronic
design and prototyping, general computing, microchip processors with various facilities and of course
MSG satellite imaging. He will be happy to discuss any of the above topics, and to help anyone local,
including viewing his setup.
• e-mail: David@Strickland.uk.com
Geoff Morris GW3ATZ, Shotton, Flintshire, NE WALES
Geoff has lots of experience with aerial, co-ax,connectors, mounting hardware etc. and has also done a
lot of work with the orbiting satellites. Geoff has been a EUMETCast Meteosat-8 user for some time andis familiar with David Taylor’s MSG software; he should be able to share his experiences with
newcomers to this branch of the hobby.
• Tel: (01244) 818252• e-mail: gw3atz@btopenworld.com
Guy Martin G8NFU, Biggin Hill NW Kent, ENGLAND
Guy is prepared to advise anyone who wishes to receive MSG under Windows 2000.
• agm@tonbridge-school.org
Hector Cintron, San Juan, Puerto Rico, USA
Hector is prepared to field enquiries on HRPT, APT, EMWIN and NOAAPORT• Phone: 787-774-8657• e-mail: n1tkk@hwic.net
E-mail contact can of course be made at any time, but we would ask you to restrict
telephone contact to the period 7.00-9.00 pm in the evenings.

Useful Internet
Discussion Groups
There are a number of Internet-based discussion groups available to weather satellite enthusiasts. You canjoin any of these by sending an e-mail to the appropriate address, with a request to subscribe. Indeed, ablank e-mail containing the word ‘subscribe’ in its Subject line is all that is required. Some of the more
useful groups and their contact addresses are listed below.
GEO-Subscribers
This is a group where GEO members can exchange information relating to either GEO itself or Earthobservation satellites and related matters.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/GEO-Subscribers/

Satsignal
An end-user self help group for users of David Taylor's Satellite Software Tools including the orbit predictor
WXtrack; the file decoders GeoSatSignal and SatSignal; the HRPT Reader and image creator program;the image remapper GroundMap; and software for the EUMETCast service—the MSG Data Manager, the
AVHRR Manager and the ATOVS Reader.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SatSignal/

MSG-1
A forum dedicated to Meteosat Second Generation (MSG), where members can share information about
the EUMETCast reception hardware and software for the Meteosat geostationary satellites.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MSG-1/

METOP
A forum for users of high-resolution AHRPT data from the MetOp satellite, available via EUMETCast.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/METOP/

AVHRR
A forum for users who download high-resolution EARS-AVHRR data from the NOAA polar orbiting weather
satellites via EUMETCast.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AVHRR/ATOVSA Group for discussions about using ATVOS data. With 40 sounder channels (20 microwave, 19 thermaland 1 visible), there is a vast amount of data available. Data from the whole world is available from CLASS(www.class.noaa.gov) and for an extended Europe, via EUMETCast.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ATOVS/

Weather Satellite Reports
A group providing reports, updates and news on operational aspects of weather satellites.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/weather-satellite-reports/

WXtoImg
Users of the WXtoImg software package for capturing and imaging NOAA APT can air their problems,
discuss its features and ask questions about it.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/wxtoimg/

www.geo-web.org.uk

GEO Quarterly No 13

Copy Deadline
for GEO Quarterly No 13

Saturday, April 28

The Editor is always on the lookout forarticles and images for inclusion in GEO
Quarterly. These can relate to any aspect ofEarth Imaging, especially:• Technical articles concerning relevant
hardware / software• Construction projects• Weather satellite images• Reports on weather phenomena• Descriptions of readers’ satellite
imaging stations• Activities from overseas readers• Letters to the Editor• Problems and Queries for our experts
to answer
Contributions should of course be original
and, where possible, should be submitted tothe editor in electronic format (floppy disc, email attachment, CD). But of course we will
also accept handwritten or typed copy should
the need arise.
Please note, however, that major articles
which contain large numbers of satellite
images, photographs or other illustrations
should be submitted as early as possible
so that they can be prepared and made up
into pages in time for publication.

Images and Diagrams
Images can be accepted in any of the major
bitmap formats, e.g. JPG, BMP, GIF, TIFF
etc. Images in both monochrome and colour
are welcomed for inclusion. Line drawingsand diagrams are preferred in Windows
metafile and postscript formats. We can also
scan original photographs, negatives andslides.
Gridding, Overlays and Captions
Please note that readers’ satellite images
should be provided without added grid lines,
country outlines or captions unless these
are considered essential to illustrate anarticle.
If your article submission contains embedded
images and diagrams, please note that it isessential that you also submit theindividual images in one of the formats
described above: these are essential forpage make-up purposes.
Submission of Copy
All materials for publication should be sent to
the Editor, Les Hamilton, 8 Deeside Place,
Aberdeen, AB15 7PW, Scotland.
Materials may also be sent as attachments
to the following e-mail address:
editor@geo-web.org.uk

Larger attachments (1 Mb to 10 Mb) are best
sent to:editor.geo@googlemail.com

And finally . . . if you do have material readyfor the next GEO Quarterly, please submit it
as soon as it is ready—do not wait till thedeadline before sending it in. This simply
creates an editorial log-jam.

iii

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3. UK residents may also pay by personal cheque or Postal Order made payable to ‘Group for Earth Observation’Your subscription is valid for one year from your date of application and entitles you to all the privileges of membership of the Groupfor Earth Observation, including four issues of GEO Quarterly. Please note that your subscription will commence with the issue of
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March 2007

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 13

Peter Wakelin
DMSP 17 Launched
A Boeing Delta 4M vehicle launched the 17th weather satellite in
the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program from Vandenberg,
California on November 4. The satellite was placed into the usual
850 km sun-synchronous orbit with a single burn of this powerfulrocket’s second stage. Some time after spacecraft separation fromthe rocket there was a fragmentation event (see below) but the
payload was not affected. An early switch to protective ‘safe
mode’ was attributed to software issues, according to a NOAA
report.
More Fragments Threaten Spacecraft
During a period of almost 12 months to the beginning of May
2006 no satellite breakups were detected but since then no fewer
than nine have fragmented. The possible causes of fragmentation
include a direct collision with another orbiting body (even a tiny
fragment travelling at orbital speeds has colossal kinetic energy);
a build-up of pressure within fuel tanks and batteries causing
rupture; or even a very small leak leading to a satellite spinning
faster and faster until it breaks up. Another cause is deliberate
destruction and two of the nine fragmented for this reason.
Cosmos 2423’s deliberate destruction on November 17 was not
unexpected as the previous satellites in this class of 7-ton
Russian military Earth-imaging craft suffered the same fate. The
Russians like to ensure that no part of these spacecraft survive
atmospheric re-entry and fall into the wrong hands. As they
operate in very low orbits, the orbital lifetimes of fragments tend
to be short and most burned up within a few weeks.

GOES 13 Completes On-Orbit Testing
Previously known as GOES-N, this Boeing-built satellite waslaunched in May, 2006 and is the first of three of a moreadvanced design. After carrying out basic engineering tests for amonth after launch, Boeing turned GOES 13 over to NASA for
performance testing in mid-summer. In December and early
January, NOAA carried out science and operations performance
testing and on January 5 turned off the instruments in
preparation for on-orbit storage until required.
Enhancements over the earlier GOES spacecraft include:• Improved Image Navigation and Registration (INR) by
using star trackers.
• A more stable optical bench to isolate thermal
deformations of the spacecraft from the Imager andSounder instruments.
• An improved Data Collection System so that more Data
Collection Platforms can use the link at the same time.
• An improved power subsystem enabling better
management during eclipse periods.
• Design life has been increased to 10 years and expected
propellant lifetime increased to at least 13 years.

The Chinese have admitted that the destruction of theirFeng Yun-1C weather satellite on January 11 was the result of
the successful test of an anti-satellite weapon. At the time ofwriting, evidence is emerging that several earlier attempts had
been made to destroy a satellite, possibly the same one. Hundredsof fragments large enough to be tracked by radar have beencatalogued but there will be thousands more tiny ones in longlifetime orbits as Feng Yun was circling Earth at 850 km
altitude.
After successfully lofting DMSP-17 into orbit on November 4, theDelta 4M second stage had ample fuel remaining to reduce speed
significantly and make a steep descent into the Pacific Ocean,
thereby avoiding the possible damage or injury on the groundthat could result from a natural decay. However, soon after
payload separation, and a full orbit before the successful re-entry
burn, at least 60 trackable pieces of debris were ejected. The
mechanism for this debris generation is not yet understood andan investigation is under way to determine the cause and prevent
similar occurrences in future Delta 4 launches.
Another Delta fragmented on December 3 after being dormant inorbit for 17 years. This was the Delta-2 vehicle used to launch
NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) into a 900 km sunsynchronous orbit but the Delta was in a 685 x 790 km orbit at
the time of the breakup. This fragmentation was not expected as
the vehicle had been ‘passivated’ at the end of its mission by
venting all remaining volatile materials. A collision with anotherpiece of debris is the most likely cause of this breakup.
Also in December, the second stage of the H-2A vehicle used toorbit Japan’s second classified Information Gathering System(IGS) spacecraft last September fragmented. As the perigee of its
orbit was only 430 km, the lifetimes of these fragments will be
short.

A GOES-13 visible image from June 22, 2006 showing Argentina andsouthern Chile on a largely fine Winter afternoon
Credit: NASA/GSFC

Formosat-3 is an Outstanding Success
Since its launch in April, 2006, this joint US/Taiwanese project,which is also known as COSMIC (Constellation Observing
System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate), has resulted ingreatly improved accuracy in profiling temperatures and watercontent in the high atmosphere.
The set of six tiny satellites is probing the atmosphere in a new
way and takes measurements above the entire planet. COSMIC
works by detecting the tiny changes in the speed of signals
received from the numerous GPS (Global Positioning System)
satellites when the atmosphere intervenes as it inevitably muston several thousand occasions every day.

www.geo-web.org.uk

23

GEO Quarterly No 13

Group for Earth Observation

In a test conducted at the European Centre for Medium-Range
Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in Reading, UK, scientists foundthat the inclusion of COSMIC data significantly improved
stratospheric temperature forecasts over the northernhemisphere. Further information on the COSMIC programme
can be found on the University Corporation for AtmosphericResearch’s website at:March 2007

programme, the second generation Meteosats and the Chinese
FY-2 series still use the spin-scan system.

http://www.cosmic.ucar.edu
NOAA Satellites Helped in Saving 272 Lives in 2006
NOAA’s geostationary and polar-orbiting satellites, together with
the Russian’s Cospas craft make up the international Search andRescue Satellite-Aided Tracking System called COSPASSARSAT. In the US and surrounding waters alone, 272 people
were saved last year after signals from emergency beacons weredetected by spacecraft, and their positions relayed to theappropriate Rescue Coordination Center. Worldwide, and since
the the system was created in 1982, there have been more than
20,300 rescues. With the phasing out of the older beacons
operating at 121.5 and 243 MHz in the next two years, thenumber of rescues is likely to rise as the 406 MHz beacons, which
use GPS technology, become the new standard.
Cassini Views Earth From Beyond Saturn
The planet Mercury is difficult to observe from Earth because it
orbits much closer to the Sun than we do and their angularseparation rarely exceeds 25°. Viewed from the vicinity of Saturn,
Earth is always within 7° of the Sun so the spectacular image
below was taken whilst Cassini was passing through Saturn’s
shadow to avoid camera damage.

Cassini images Saturn and Earth
Credit: CICLOPS TeamThe image is a composite made up from 165 separate images
taken with the wide-angle camera on the Cassini spacecraft overnearly three hours on September 15, 2006. This back-lit image ofthe rings shows them as never seen before and reveals
unprecedented detail in the ice and dust particles that make up
the rings. At the time of the image, Cassini was about 2.2 million
kilometres from Saturn and just short of 1,500 million kilometresfrom Earth. Links to the Cassini-Huygens mission and more
remarkable images can be found on the website of the Cassini
Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) at:
http://CICLOPS.org

40 Years of Geostationary Weather Satellites
On December 6, 1966, ATS-1 (Applications Technology Satellite)
was launched to became
the first spacecraft toroutinely image Earth fromthe geostationary orbit. The
Spin-Scan camera on board
The ATS-1
Spacecraft
was the idea of University
Credit: NASAof Wisconsin-Madisonscientist Verner E Suomi
and, although the US now
uses three-axis stabilised
satellites for their GOES

24

Sequence of ATS-1 Images taken on December 12, 1966
Credit: Space Science and Engineering Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison

By modern standards, ATS-1 looks rather crude and its imagery,which was in the visible part of the spectrum only, was of low
resolution. WEFAX imagery was transmitted on 135.6 MHz
China Launches Feng Yun 2D
The fourth geostationary weather
satellite launched by China lifted
off from the country’s mostsoutherly launch site at Xichang at0053 UTC on December 8 on board
a Chang Zheng-3A rocket. Aftercheckout it is expected to operate
simultaneously with the stillfunctioning FY-2C satellite.
A further four spacecraft in the
FY-2 series are to be launched
before the next-generation FY-4
series is developed. Six of the latter are planned for launch before
2020 as are 12 in the FY-3 series ofpolar-orbiting spacecraft, according to sources within the China
Meteorological
Administration.
The first FY-3 is expected to belaunched this year.

FY 2D lifts off from Xichang inmountainous Sichuan Province
Credit: Xinhua

India’s PSLV Launches Four Satellites
In its tenth flight conducted fromthe Satish Dhawan Space Centre at
Sriharikota, north of Chennai,
India, the Indian Space Research
Organisation’s Polar Satellite
Launch Vehicle (PSLV) successfullylaunched four satellites on
January 10. They were India’s
CartoSat-2 and Space capsule
Recovery Experiment (SRE-1),
Indonesia’s LAPAN-TUBSat and
The tiny PehuenSat attached
Argentina’s PehuenSat-1. For theto the DLA
first time, a Dual Launch Adapter
Credit: ISRO
(DLA) was used in the PSLV toaccommodate two primary satellites in tandem.
The 680 kg main payload, CartoSat-2, mounted above the DLA,
was the first satellite to be injected into the 635 km sunsynchronous orbit, followed 45 seconds later by the DLA with thetiny 6 kg PehuenSat (pronounced pea-when-sat) mounted upon it.
Two minutes later, SRE-1 was separated and, after a further
190 s, LAPAN-TUBSat was separated. All the payloads werewww.geo-web.org.uk

concluded on page 44 ...

March 2007

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 13

Douglas Deans
The successful launch and deployment ofEurope’s first polar orbiting
meteorological satellite, MetOp-A, hasalready made it possible to receive
global—yes worldwide—HRPT data via
the EUMETCast system. In time,
regional data will also become available
via EUMETCast and also for users
equipped to receive the satellite’s direct
read-out LRPT and AHRPT signals.
The first trial MetOp-A data started
being disseminated through EUMETCast
during November 2006 and will continue
well into spring 2007—until the satelliteis, hopefully, declared fully operational.
The quantity and complexity of the newdata meant that new software would beneeded and, once again, a good friend of
the weather satellite community, David
Taylor, came to the rescue. Within a few
days of the first trial data appearing, abeta version of MetOp Manager, his new
software, was available …a remarkablefeat.

Figure 1 - The Bay of Bengal and Bangladesh, with the snow covered Himalayas to the north.
Image © EUMETSAT 2007

Figure 2 - A false coloured image showing part of Antarctica

Figure 3 - A false coloured view over South America, showing the Amazon basin.

Image © EUMETSAT 2007

Image © EUMETSAT 2007www.geo-web.org.uk

25

GEO Quarterly No 13

Group for Earth Observation

March 2007

Readers wishing to learn more about thelaunch of MetOp and the satellite’s wide
ranging suite of on-board instruments
should refer to articles in the previous
issue of GEO Quarterly [1,2].
MetOp’s Data Services
A brief word about the services which thesatellite will provide. These can bedivided into three basic categories:• The Direct Readout Service will
provide both AHRPT and LRPT
data streams for those withreceiving stations and appropriate
receivers and antennas. AHRPT
carries all instrument data whilst
the LRPT service will provide
ATOVS (MHS, AMSU-A and HIRS)
at full resolution plus three of the
AVHRR channels in JPEG
compressed format.
• The Global Data Service alreadyprovides, in near real-time to theuser community, products generated
from instrument data. All
instrument data recorded during theprevious orbit of MetOp are dumped
to the Central Data Acquisition
Station (CDA) located on the islandof Spitzbergen in Svalbard. The time
to complete one orbit is about 102
minutes. The data received at the
CDA is transferred to the EPS Core
Ground Segment (CGS) located at
EUMETSAT headquarters in
Darmstadt, Germany, where it isprocessed for distribution via the
EUMETCast system. Global data
products originating from the NOAA
spacecraft will also be generated in
the EPS CGS and disseminated via
EUMETCast.
• The MetOp Regional Data service
is provided by the EUMETSATAdvanced Retransmission Service(EARS). EARS comprises three
separate polar satellite instrument
data services. These are the existing
EARS-ATOVS and the pilot EARSAVHRR and EARS-ASCAT.
Some of the data rates and quantities are
incredible given that many are being
provided as full resolution global data. I
anticipate that the majority of amateurs
will be mainly interested in the global
AVHRR data. That in itself is a challengewith 28 MB files (each containing a 3minute chunk of data) arriving every few
minutes. That represents over half agigabyte of data per hour, constituting an
additional 14 GB per day for thoserunning 24/7. So as well as data
quantities to consider, data throughput [3,4] will also be a serious factor.
The EPS data channels and rates are notyet finalised and there is a likely
prospect that NOAA data will also betransmitted through the EPS system at alater date. However, for the moment, let26

Figure 4 - Channel 4 IR image of Greenland, Arctic ice and the North Pole (circled at upper left)
Image © EUMETSAT 2007

us concentrate on MetOp-A and inparticular the global AVHRR data.
MetOp Manager (MOM)
I don’t know quite how he does it but,within a few days of the first preliminary
uncalibrated AVHRR test data being
made available through EUMETCast,David Taylor had this new software up
and running. Although it has alreadyevolved from its early beginnings into asophisticated program, MetOp Manager
is still a work in progress. Indeed, I
expect there will be further exciting anduseful options available by the time youread this.
As far as amateurs are concerned, thereal gem from MetOp-A is the global
AVHRR data providing 6-channel, 1-km
resolution of the entire world and madeavailable via EUMETCast about 1 hour
40 minutes later; i.e. one orbit delayed:
unbelievable! A lot of sophisticated datais already provided from MetOp (withmore to come, since commissioning is not
yet complete as I write), but whether
much will be of interest to amateurs, only

www.geo-web.org.uk

time will tell. David Taylor is keeping avery open mind on this and his program
may well be developed further in the
future to cater for other data forms.
Processing AVHRR Data with MOM
We must remember that global data
presents a completely new challenge forall of us, so let us consider some of theissues that had to be addressed.
• How do we handle new data of theorder of 13 GB per day? The raw data
file format has changed from that sentby the NOAA satellites, and as suchcannot be utilised directly in programs
such as HRPT Reader.
• How can days worth of global data be
best saved and then retrieved in ameaningful way ? There has to besome form of visual interface whichallows users to pick data on a timeand date basis, or from ageographical location.
• How many segments of data do wewish to see at any one time ? As

March 2007

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 13

the data in ‘HPT’ format, which can beread by his existing HRPT Reader withall the options and advanced featuresthat it offers.
I know this has caused him considerable
work but it has meant that a programthat most of us already have cancontinue to be utilised, avoiding the extra
cost of a new viewing and processing
platform. David has to be applauded forthis work and I understand, certainly at
the time of writing, that he is the only
author to provide an L1B to HPT
conversion. So I suggest that saving in
HPT format is all that is needed.

Figure 5 - The MetOp Configuration Screen

David said to me, each of ourcomputers will now be similar to an
SAA database with a graphicalinterface to allow selection of images.
In some ways it is more onerous than
SAA since the NOAA satellites could
not handle global HRPT data but only
preselected areas from recordings. So
we can see the sort of searchingquestions confronting David even at
the concept stage of his software.

Let us now examine just
how solutions to all thoseissues have been
incorporated into MOM.

MOM Save Formats
MetOp Manager allows you to save files
in both EPS format and HPT formats.
EPS is the format in which the data issent and is used by MOM to produce its
quicklooks and the other channel view
options. The EPS format is quite
different from the ‘L1B’ HRPT format wehave been used to receiving from the
NOAA satellites and so cannot be used inprograms such as HRPT Reader.
However, David has uniquely been able
to offer the additional option of saving

The current image is always loaded into
MOM anyway and any further looks ateither individual segments (or shouldthat be chunks!) or combined segments isbest done with HRPT Reader—which ofcourse allows you to enjoy the fullprocessing options which that program
offers. In addition, saving both formats
will make a huge ‘hole’ in your hard
drive. EPS format alone amounts to over
13 GB each day. Again, it is for you tochoose but, at least initially, I would
suggest keeping ‘Save data in EPS
format’ unticked and ticking both optionsin the ‘HPT format’ box.
‘Data retention days’ is self explanatory
but be careful not to set this too highunless you have a very generous hard
drive.
MOM includes a superb option (describedlater) for combining the downloaded 3minute chunks so that you can produce

When MetOp Manager is first loaded, it
is important to go to <Setup tab/FileControls> and ensure all the options are
set up correctly for your particular
computer arrangement. Let us look insome detail at what is required here, as
any errors at this stage can cause
problems. Once set up, the program canbe left in full automation.
A typical setup page is illustrated abovein figure 5. The first box, labelled‘Tellicast EPS AVHRR global received
files path’ should point to the folder
where the raw MetOp data is being
stored. Of course, for those using a twocomputer system, this will look across the
network to the relevant folder on the‘receive’ computer.
The ‘Processed global files path’ should
contain the location where you want
MOM to store your processed data. Bydefault the program forms a new folder
under MSG-1 but I prefer to see this data
completely separated from thegeostationary stuff, hence the MetOp
folder seen in the figure. The choice isyours.

Figure 6 - Southern Australia basks in the sunshine in this channel 4 IR image
Image © EUMETSAT 2007www.geo-web.org.uk

27

GEO Quarterly No 13

Group for Earth Observation

March 2007

Figure 7 - A Quicklook over America’s west coast

Figure 8 - The World View, showing incoming chunks of MetOp data

Figure 9 - The Browser View, showing processed chunks of MetOp data.

Figure 10 - A 22-minute image created by joining 8 MetOp data chunks
Image © EUMETSAT 200628

www.geo-web.org.uk

March 2007

images of longer than three minutes
duration. Create an empty folder in asuitable location then use the ‘Browse’
button to enter this in the ‘Combined files
path’ field.
In the ‘File options’ box, ‘Delete files fromRX’ simply deletes the raw data after it
has been processed and saved by MOM.
However, a word of warning here: if thisis unticked the program will continue tore-process the same files over and overagain. The ‘Dates in folders’ option
ensures that the folder you have selected
for the processed data uses the subfolder
structure year/month/day etc. This canbe very useful and I strongly recommend
ticking this option.
Once you have raw data coming in, clickon the <Images> tab, press the green
start button and start enjoying thiswonderful global imagery; and be
prepared to be seriously impressed!
Figure 7 shows the ‘Images’ window
containing a quicklook image ofCalifornia.
There are two interesting options when
an image is displayed in this window• a single left-click of the mouse zooms
in to the image: clicking the mouse asecond time zooms back out. Whenthe mouse pointer is over the image ahint is provided for a few seconds toremind you of this option.
• a right mouse-click over the image
displays a menu which offers a rangeof boundary styles that can be usedon the image overlay.
In the <Setup/Annotation & Display> tabthere is a useful setting called ‘Autoswitch image display’. This allows thecoloured quicklook to be shown when
there is sufficient illumination but
automatically switches to an IR
channel-4 one when there is not, a very
handy feature for providing detail innight-time images. The other channeltabs that can be seen in figure 7 make itpossible to view a greyscale version of
any of the five basic wavelengths inaddition to the coloured quicklook.
Finally, if you wish MOM to store
thumbnails for use as quicklook images
in other parts of the program, check the‘Save thumbnail’ option (recommended).
The World View Tab
Remember, MetOp is a polar orbiting
spacecraft that makes ascending anddescending passes covering the entire
world. There has to be a graphical way ofrepresenting not only the satellite’scurrent position, but to record where it
has been over the days for which you
retain data.
Figure 8 shows the World View window
where, by default and to avoid clutter,the previous orbit is shown on the mapwith the current 3-minute segment

Group for Earth Observation

highlighted in red; the rest of that orbit
is shown in shades of grey, becoming
progressively lighter the farther back intime you go. However, if you wish, there
is an option to view all tracks: descending
in red, ascending in blue.
Also, note the option to choose the dateshould you wish to look back at stored
files from passes of previous days. There
are several map styles offered, including
Mercator and Plate Carré as well as
detailed North and South polar projection
maps which are really excellent forstudying those fascinating parts of ourworld.
The Browser Tab
One of the most useful facilities of MOM
is the Browser tab, shown in figure 9.
Here you can select a single chunk forviewing or a sequence of chunks forjoining. You can preview the joined
sequence as a ‘quicklook’ image, edit it ifnecessary then combine the chunks forviewing in HRPT Reader, a powerful tool
which can provide spectacular images
from any part of the world. If you pressthe ‘Today’ button then all the orbits so
far for the current day will be shown (inaccordance with whether you have theAscending or Descending boxes or bothticked). Each 3-minute chunk isdisplayed and there is also an option toshow the UTC time inside each chunk.
Joining Chunks
How do we join chunks to view acombined image? Select the area you
wish to view by means of the mouse.
Click the left mouse button and keep
holding it down while you drag it down
and to the side until the desired area isincluded in the selection box—thenrelease the button. The chunks best
fitting that area will be highlighted in
red as shown in figure 9. If your selection
proves not to be exactly as you wanted
then existing chunks can be deleted or
adjacent ones added by double clicking onthem with the mouse—a very neat anduseful option.
Once you have selected the correct groupof chunks the image they represent canbe previewed by clicking the ‘Preview’
button. Note that this is only possible if
you checked ‘Save thumbnail’ on the
Setup tab as mentioned earlier. If all iswell then press the ‘Combine’ button andthe joined chunks will be saved as an
HPT file in the ‘Combined’ folder you
created earlier during program setup.
If ‘Open in reader’ is ticked, the combined
image will be opened automatically in
HRPT Reader (provided, of course, thatyou have this software). Polar projections
are again made available to simplify yourchoice of chunks over the polar regions.
I do hope that my guide to MetOp
Manager’s main features will encourage
you to have a look at this excellent

www.geo-web.org.uk

GEO Quarterly No 13

software and open up the enjoyment ofsome wonderful global imagery. There
are other exciting options available in the
program ... but let me leave somethingfor you to discover for yourself.
Conclusions
MetOp Manager is still evolving as we
become more experienced with handlingthe quality and quantity of this fabulous
data. World 1-km AVHRR imagery issimply breathtaking and, for thosealready using the EUMETCast system, isavailable at no extra cost.
There is a great deal of further global
data yet to come from MetOp-A including
ATOVS, IASI and Scatterometer data. I
would anticipate that the majority ofamateurs will probably not want much ofthis although those interested in amateur
meteorology may be interested in the
ATOVS service comprising HIRS, AMSU
and MHS.
David Taylor has stated that he will keep
an open mind to future developments ofthe program to deal with other data but
much will depend on demand. However,just to see global, 6-channel, 1-km HRPT
imagery makes this program an absolutemust. By way of a taster to thosecontemplating setting up, I have provided
a number of interesting MetOp-A images
recently taken from my own system.
Please remember that, for purposes ofpublication, those images are atconsiderably reduced resolution and size
compared with the original saved data.
The Images
Images from MetOp-A can be obtained
from all round the Earth every day via
EUMETCast and the illustrations in thisarticle are designed to whet yourappetite. Even monochrome images such
figure 4 showing Greenland and its
surroundings can be spectacular.
The images reproduced above arenecessarily reduced in size for publication
in GEO Quarterly, but it is worth areminder that the originals were allreceived with a maximum ground
resolution of 1.1 kilometres per pixel,
identical with the HRPT imagery
disseminated by the NOAA satellites.
Alan Banks’ front cover image depicting
the Andes really highlights the resolving
power of the AVHRR instrument under
optimum conditions.
References
1 A Successful Launch for MetOp-A
GEO Quarterly 12, page 9.
2 MetOp-A Onboard Instrument Review
GEO Quarterly 12, page 6.
3 EUMETCast and MetOp Data
GEO Quarterly 13, page 10 (this issue)
4 EUMETCast Data Throughput
GEO Quarterly 11, page 30.

29This map depicts the tracks of all tropical cyclones which formed worldwide between 1985 and 2005. The points show the locations of the storms at
six-hourly intervals and the colours the strengths on the Saffir-Simpson Scale (key at lower right of image). The original background image comes from NASA’s
Blue Marble: Land Surface, Shallow Water, and Shaded Topography (http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/images/2433/land_shallow_topo_east.tif andhttp://visibleearth.nasa.gov/images/2433/land_shallow_topo_west.tif)

Thanks to Milan Konecny for alerting us to this remarkable image, which was published on WIKIPEDIA, the free Internet encyclopaedia, as its ‘Image of
the Day’ on October 3. The original image, which measures 8000 x 4000 pixels (5.72 MB) is worth seeing and can be downloaded fromhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Global_tropical_cyclone_tracks-edit2.jpg

GEO Quarterly No 13

Group for Earth Observation

March 2007

Peter Wakelin
A point on the equator is moving to the east
at 465 m/s due to the Earth's rotation so asatellite awaiting launch is moving east at
this speed multiplied by the cosine of thelatitude of the launch site. The job of the
propulsion system is to raise the payload to35,900 km above the equator—and moving
due east—with a speed of 3074 m/s, where
it will complete one revolution in
23 h 56 m 4s to precisely match the Earth's
rotation. This is not exactly 24 hours
because, although there are 24 hours in aday, the Earth rotates 366 times in a 365
day year.
A Possible Launch Profile
The launch vehicle lifts off, heading due
east, accelerating the payload and upperstage rocket to a speed of about 7,700 m/s
for a 300 km circular orbit. It will cross theequator slightly more than 90° of longitude
east of the launch site at an angle (its orbit
inclination) numerically similar to thelatitude of the launch site.
The next firing occurs at the equator butwith a significant lateral component to thethrust to reduce the inclination andincrease speed to about 10,200 m/s. This
speed will place the satellite into a typicaleccentric GTO (Geostationary Transfer
Orbit) with an apogee near the required
final altitude. It will take about six hours tocoast up to apogee by, which time it willagain be over the equator but the speed
will have dropped to about 1,600 m/s.

A typical GTO drawn to scale

The next firing occurs at apogee, again
with a significant lateral component, andincreases speed to about 3,074 m/s andreduces the inclination to zero. As it isunlikely that the payload will be exactly
above the required longitude, the speed isadjusted slightly so that it drifts slowly
relative to the Earth below. An increase ineastward speed will push the satellite to a32

higher, longer-period orbit and it will appear
to drift to the west. Once at the required
longitude, the speed is again adjusted tostop the drift.
Launch Efficiency
Almost all satellite launches use multi-stage
vehicles so that the minimum possible
mass, other than payload, is accelerated toorbital velocity. From the launch scenario
described above, it is obvious that the bestsite for launching a geostationary satellite
lies on the equator. Not only does anequatorial site have the greatest eastward
velocity, it also means that no propellant
has to be used to reduce the inclination as
it will inevitably be zero.
Some launches do take place from afloating platform on the equator in the
Pacific Ocean but the majority are fromsites on land. Kourou (French Guiana) at
5° and Sriharikota (India) at 14° are not far
from the equator but Chinese, Americanand Russian launches are increasingly
disadvantaged by their higher latitudes.
The Russians use the Baikonur
cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for theirlaunches to geostationary orbit but at
45.6° N, much more propellant is needed.
Of course, for polar orbits, the eastward
speed of the launch site is a disadvantage
and Russia's high latitude cosmodrome at
Plesetsk (62.8°N) is the most efficient.
Launch profiles do vary for different
vehicles and for other reasons; forexample, there may be restraints onlighting conditions requiring the craft to bein sunlight at a particular time, so the boost
to GTO may not occur at the first equatorcrossing. The initial orbit may not be
circular; it may be more efficient to get to agreater altitude (and therefore a slower
speed) for the burn to GTO if an inclination
reduction is made simultaneously. Anotherpossibility, which has been used several
times, is to use the 'super-GTO'. Rather
than make any inclination change at low
altitude, the super-GTO burn takes thepayload up to 40,000 km or more above
the equator where its speed will be wellunder 1,000 m/s and a significant change
in direction can be made with little
expenditure of fuel. Any fuel economy here
though has to weighed against the extra
fuel needed to attain the higher speed
required to reach the greater altitude.

www.geo-web.org.uk

Perturbing Forces
Ideally, a geostationary satellite's orbit
should be perfectly circular (i.e. its
eccentricity should be zero), it should
remain exactly above the equator (i.e. its
inclination is zero) and its altitude should
be such that the orbital period exactly
matches the Earth's rotation (i.e. its mean
motion is 1.002738). With the control
mechanisms on modern spacecraft it would
be possible to attain these precise
parameters after orbit insertion but,
although there is no atmospheric drag at
geostationary altitude, there are otherforces constantly acting on the spacecraft.
Obviously, Earth's gravity is dominant at
geostationary altitude but our moon is only
ten times more distant so its influence is far
from insignificant, as is that of the much
more massive, but also more distant, Sun.
As neither of these bodies remains in theequatorial plane they tend to pull thesatellites out of their desired orbits,changing both inclination and eccentricity.
However, these perturbations can bepredicted and, if a satellite is launched to alongitude where it is known that inclination
will decrease for a time, then a small initial
inclination would be desirable as it would
save propellant and extend the satellite's
operational lifetime.
The Earth's uneven mass distribution also
causes small perturbations so the forces
acting on MTSat-1R over 140°E longitude
will not be precisely the same as thoseacting on Meteosat-7 over the Indian
Ocean. Even the equator itself is not a
perfect circle; an ocean swimmer in theMaldive Islands is about 140 m nearer tothe centre of the Earth than one in Papua
New Guinea. Satellites tend to sample all
longitudes equally as the Earth spins
beneath so that variations of gravity withlongitude average out, but withgeostationary satellites, which remain at
the same longitude, this is not the case.
MTSat-1R is located above a bulge soneeds more east-west station-keeping
manouevres than Meteosat-7 which is, so
to speak, 'stuck in a hole'.
Some Real Orbits
Two-line elements sets (TLEs) are derived
mainly from radar data but optical sensors
are also used for the more distant objects.
TLEs for geostationary satellites are muchless accurate than those for near-EarthMarch 2007

Group for Earth Observation

objects but here are three for familiar satellites which, after comparison with previous andlater TLEs, look to be reliable:
METEOSAT 7
1 24932U 97049B 07012.67678219 .00000092 00000-0 00000+0 0 1278
2 24932 002.9592 080.0218 0001044 259.7347 072.7832 01.00273906 34299
GOES 12
1 26871U 01031A 07012.48004676 -.00000224 00000-0 00000+0 0 8508
2 26871 000.4164 267.6906 0002457 019.3046 282.1063 01.00278753 20117
HOT BIRD 6
1 27499U 02038A 07009.81468216 .00000105 00000-0 10000-3 0 2786
2 27499 000.0195 027.8377 0007265 265.9105 121.5018 01.00276540 16088

All the mean motions (the penultimate parameter in line 2) are very close to the ideal value
and that for Meteosat-7 is spot-on: but even small discrepancies accumulate over timenecessitating an east-west station-keeping manoeuvre. However, only very tiny speed
adjustments are required, needing small amounts of propellant.
Two of the inclinations are very small (the second term in line 2) but that of Meteosat-7 isalmost 3 degrees. Of these three satellites, Meteosat-7 is the oldest (it was the 49th launchof 1997 as shown in the 2nd term of line 1) and is now getting low on propellant.
At .0007, Hot Bird-6 shows the greatest eccentricity (the 4th parameter in line 2) which
equates to about 60 km difference in altitude between apogee and perigee.
The author took these two photographs of the Hot Bird cluster at 13°E just two hours aparton the night of January 12/13.

GEO Quarterly No 13

Modifying YourEUMETCast PC
to Receive MetOp... continued from page 13

quickly, meaning that I have sometimes
needed to reboot several times a day. To
cure this you must get to grips with therecv.channel.ini file.
If, like myself, you experience difficulties,
remember that you are not alone: there
are several avenues of help available.
Become a member of the YahooGEO-Subscribers, MetOp and SatSignalgroups, where there is a wealth ofexperience and good humoured help on
hand. You can search each group’s
archive to browse questions and answers
from other members.
Good luck and enjoy this great new
facility.
Internet References
On his website, David Taylor has very
extensive 'how to' sections on problems
plus useful FAQs. Many thanks to David
for making his website available fordetails in this article:
www.satsignal.eu

And if you need help registering withEUMETSAT, consult the GEO website atwww.geo-web.org.uk/eumreg.html

In Memorium
David Ransom Jr
Photographs of the Hot Bird cluster. The right-hand image was taken 2 hours later than the left-hand one.

With the camera fixed, the satellites appear
as points of light whereas the stars appear
to trail as a consequence of Earth's rotation
during the 5 second exposure time. Any
departure from zero eccentricity will show
as an east-west oscillation about the mean
position over 24 hours and a north-south
oscillation will be the consequence of anon-zero inclination. Over just two hours,
the relative positions have changed
significantly. An idea of the actual
separation of the satellites can be derived
from the length of the star trails which
equates to about 15 kilometres at that
distance. Although there's a lot of space up
there, satellite operators constantly monitor
separations to reduce collision risk andtransponders spread across a cluster of
spacecraft still offer safer redundancy thana single, larger spacecraft.
Dead but Unburied
Old satellites, rocket casings and debris in
low orbits will eventually succumb toatmospheric friction but, for perigees above
1,000 km, the orbital lifetimes run to
thousands of years and dead geostationary
satellites will orbit for ever unless action istaken to remove them. It was shown abovethat an increase in speed of about
1,500 m/s was needed to transfer from
GTO to geostationary orbit. To de-orbit asatellite at the end of its useful life would
necessitate carrying sufficient fuel to reduce
its speed by this same amount, which is not
feasible at present. The current way of
dealing with old geostationary satellites is to
avoid using up all the propellant for stationkeeping manoeuvres and to keep a little inreserve to boost them up to slightly higher
orbits to greatly reduce the risk of acollision with operational spacecraft.
Many of the early geostationary satellites
were never boosted to higher orbits andsome fail unexpectedly and cannot beraised. There are now hundreds of objects
up there and a look through the TLEs
shows that perturbations have increased
the inclinations of many of them to morethan 10°: so they occupy a huge volume ofspace. However, every one crosses theequator twice a day so it is only a matter oftime before an operational satellite is
destroyed in a collision.

www.geo-web.org.uk

We are sad to report that David
Ransome Jr, one of the earlypioneers of graphical satellite
tracking software, sadly lost hisbattle with congestive heart failure
on November 5, 2006.
David will be best remembered bymany GEO readers as the author of
STSOrbit Plus, which he originallydevised during pre-Windows days
for tracking Space Shuttle missions.
The program was used daily at the
USAF Central Computer Complex
at Cape Canaveral and at half adozen NASA and aerospace control
centres around the USA. But,
unselfishly, David also made theprogram available free to all
without need of registration, andSTSOrbit Plus became the tracking
software of choice for thousands ofamateur satellite enthusiasts
worldwide during the 1980s and1990s,David’s passing is a great sadness
for the many people he helped over
the years and the friends who knew
him. He will be sadly missed.

33

GEO Quarterly No 13

Group for Earth Observation

March 2007

Francis BellIn GEO Quarterly No 11, Arne van Bellewrote an article that examined the noiselevel and power consumption of his
computer systems and how to minimise
both dimensions. That prompted me into
action because, in the back of my mind, I
have for several years suspected that myown systems were consuming excessive
electricity. For about 30 years ourhousehold electricity consumption, in a
detached house and with two children, waspredictable at about 1000 kWh (units) per
quarter.
Over the years the bills have increased,
directly related to the cost of electricity, but
our quarterly consumption has remained
remarkably stable—until a few years ago
when I became interested in weather
satellites and associated computers. My
cavalier approach has often been to leave
everything switched on, sometimes
productively for satellite animations, but
often by default on my part. Just leave thesystems running and they will look after
themselves!
I have noticed in recent years that our
average quarterly household electricity
consumption has increased from about1000 units to 1200 units. Because I deal
with household bills this increase wassecretly transparent to the rest of the family
but it did register with me because I had to
pay the bill. I quietly suspected I was the
culprit. A pertinent clue was that early on a
winter's morning, coming down stairs, I
noticed that my study—with all its electricalequipment—was the warmest room in thehouse!

Because of publicised national,
international and environmental sensitivities
to excessive energy consumption, not tomention the fact that I have to pay the bill, I
thought I would investigate the power
consumption of my systems.
I discussed the issue with a friend and I
produced a rough design for a prototype
instrument to clip around a cable tomeasure its power consumption, assuming
a mains voltage. However, before any
further development, my friend telephoned
me saying that he had seen an
advertisement by an electrical supplieroffering an instrument similar to the one we
had discussed. Not wishing to reinvent thewheel, I bought the advertised product.
What an eye opener this was to be!
The device in question was a plug-in-thewall meter with several function settings
and a digital readout; the parameters it
measures are time, voltage and current.
Any electrical equipment can be plugged
into its outlet socket to measure power
consumption, either instantaneous or overa period of time.
I used the meter with most of the electrical
items in my study and was appalled by thefindings it revealed. Table 1 shows theresults of my research. Adding up all thestandby mode figures I discovered that I
was consuming 92.8 watt (W). In total mycareless use of electrical equipment has
more than accounted for our increased
quarterly consumption. I am still
researching the rest of our house's
electrical consumption.

Unit

Comments

OffStandbyOn

Dartcom satellite radio receiverWith a masthead preamplifier

0

-

11.3

RX2 receiverWith a masthead preamplifier

0

-

6

Philips 170/B flat screen monitor

Standby is a forced condition
There is no LED to indicate it is in standby mode
After 5 minutes warm up
Standby is a forced mode
After warming up for five minutes
This is my main MSG receiving computer

9.0

9.0

38.7

9.5

9.5

73.0

22.5

22.5

83

Dell Dimension 100 computer
AP computer
Samsung SyncMaster 753S monitor

When receiving a video signal

0

0

62

Epson CX3650 printer

0

<1

72

Dell Inspiron 1300, 17-inch laptop

There is a mains switch on the top panel of thisprinter
Small power consumption when charging thebattery0027Dell 1100 printerThis has its own mains switch at the rear

0

18

20

Linksys radio for Internet

This has an on/off switch but, if the mains
transformer is plugged in, it is always on and warm

18.8

18.8

23

S ky b o x

This is always on when connected to the mains

9

9

9

Toshiba VCR with no switch

When it's connected to the mains it is on

14

14

21

Matsui 1409 TV

This has a mains switch on the front panel

0

12

88

As a result of my measurements I havedivided my study into blocks of equipment
which can now be isolated by means oftable-top mains switches. This now enables
me to use one computer system or radio at
a time without powering up everything.
Note: professional advice should be sought
at all times when dealing with mains
electricity.
What has disturbed me is the fact that my
new flat screen monitor, a Philips 170/B,
and my Dimension 1100 Dell computer
both automatically run on standby: you
have to pull the plug from the wall to turnthem off. There is no indication from theequipment itself, such as LEDs, that they
are on standby. The same is true for mysatellite TV box and VCR which, like otherelectrical equipment in my study, have nomains on/off switches. With a combinationof mains switches for a block of equipment
and individual switches, mains
consumption (and also alas the househeating) has been reduced.
Electrical standards dictate that mains
power sockets should be about 30 cm
above floor level. This means that very
often you have to crawl under a table orbehind furniture to turn off or unplug anelectrical item: hence my course of actionof introducing accessible mains switches.
concluded on page 44 ...

Table 1

34

The plug-in-the-wall meter

www.geo-web.org.uk

March 2007

Editorship
Congratulations on GEO Q12
that arrived earlier this month.
The organisation has madehuge progress since its
inception 3 years ago, but I
recognise that the Quarterly is
becoming an increasing
headache. No replacement
editor has yet been found andan increasing proportion ofarticles are being written by thecore team. I would like to sharea few thoughts about thesituation and what could be
done.
Voluntary organisations arealways run by a small coreteam who do most of the work
and, where they are
geographically dispersed, thatteam is usually 1-2% of themembership. Interestingly,
overseas members seem tomake a disproportionate
contribution, probably because
they are particularly
passionate—as demonstrated
by their membership of anorganisation in another country.
Magazines and journals havetraditionally been the mainstay
of geographically dispersed
voluntary organisations because
they act as a surrogate forphysical meetings whichrarely/never happen. Editors
seem particularly hard to comeby because the commitment islarge and regular, and difficult tohand over. Bizarrely, theamount of time and effort
required to produce a magazine
actually seems to have gone up
with the advent of desktop
publishing, and the importanceof a journal appears to havediminished slightly with theadvent of the Internet.
I recommend that you consider
very carefully the objectives of
the Quarterly before deciding
upon the next step. I estimatethat GEO has around 500
members globally, 30 of whomare probably actively giving
something back to the hobby;
the rest are passive supporters.
Producing a regular quality
Quarterly for such a tiny
audience, from so few active
sources, is always going to be achallenge. In this situation
options could be:
1. Stop producing the Quarterly.

Group for Earth Observation

Focus more on enhancing thediscussion forum, website andshop.
2. Reduce the frequency of theQuarterly
3. Completely change theQuarterly... One annual issue,
one annual wall calendar
containing best of members’
images, two compendiums of
the best/most useful
discussion forum threads
4. Rotate the editorship witheach issue... quality would
deteriorate but essence andspirit would continue
5. Increase membership fee to£50 p.a. and pay someone to
do it (quality would still
deteriorate) Being clear about
the objectives for the
Quarterly is a good place tostart.

exist, most notably the ability toinsert photographs, drawings andtables at will. In addition, the A4
format we use requires multicolumn typesetting (rendering
make-up a bit like solving a huge
jig-saw puzzle). The smaller A5
format was dead easy - just keep
going in a straight line, as it were.

Cheers,
Ben Ramsden, NSW, Australia

Another problem is related, I
believe, to the general age rangeof our membership. By far the
majority are in the 55+ age group,
many retired and with plenty timeon their hands to pursue hobbies.
GEO Symposium meetings turnup very few members below thisthreshold—the younger generation
who have grown up with personal
computers and who almost
certainly possess the skills
required to make up and edit the
Quarterlies are notably absent. I
am just fortunate in having been
involved with Desktop Publishingat an early stage during my
involvement in the Education
Sector. What GEO really needs to
do now is attract the multitalented
younger generation and harness
their skills.

Editorial Reply

Les Hamilton (caretaker Editor)

Today it has the feel of being
the centre-piece for the group,
which appears to beunsustainable.

All the points you raise areparticularly relevant and I'm surethat, subliminally at least, we haveall been aware of them.
Particularly the 'core' element increating articles.
My own situation is rather catch22: I can cope adequately withbeing Editor; I can copeadequately with being a feature
writer.
But the reality is that I am writing,in some issues, up to 40% of thecontent as well as Editing all thereceived contributions. It is thisdual role that I find so overly timeconsuming, not helped, as you
rightly conjecture, by the relative
paucity of contributions from our
majority UK membership.
Interestingly, your point aboutsurrogate meetings seems not tobe correct. The Dutch, despite
holding their own meetings fivetimes per year, continue to be ourmost regular contributors. It
seems almost as though meeting
more often fuels the fires ofenthusiasm. They are certainly
very much more active inprogressing the hobby thanmembers in the UK.
You are also correct about theworkload increasing, not so muchbecause Desktop Publishing isitself difficult to master, but
because it opens up so many
possibilities that did not previously

Contrails
Contrail formation is dependent on
the humidity of the air an aircraft ispassing through. I note thenumber and persistence of trails
each morning from my weather
station at Westgate (Co. Durham)
and make reports to Lancaster
University, who are conducting
research into the environmental
effects of the phenomenon. In thecourse of these observation I havenoted the following:• Contrails do not readily
form in fresh polar air.
• If any cirrus cloud ispresent, and an aircraft
passes near or through it,a vapour trail may start or
become more persistent.
Also, as one might expect, an
approaching warm front shows
this well.
Fresh polar air is invariably dry
at high altitudes but its humidity
will increase as warmer tropical
air moves into it, which preventsor reduces evaporation of a
trail, rendering it persistent.
The shape of a trail is affectedby the vortices created by theaircraft and by the effect of

www.geo-web.org.uk

GEO Quarterly No 13

gravity on the ice particles
produced when a persistent trail‘freezes out’. When one flies
near a trail, this precipitation
can be seen as fallstreaks.
Spreading of the trail is also
affected by wind. The trails,
then, are influenced by ambient
temperature, ambient humidity
and ambient wind. This is, tosome extent, offset by the
resulting increase in albedo due
to increased cloud and thecooling effect of particulatesalso found in jet exhaust.
•

There is a a useful referenceon pages 167-170 of ‘Spacious
Skies’ by Richard Scorer andArjen Verkaik, published byDavid and Charles (ISBN 07153-9139-9)

Cheers,John Say, Stanhope, England.
Strait of DoverI am 90 years old and have
lived in Australia for the last 50
years. As a child we often went
to Margate or the other seaside
resorts for holidays. During thelast war I was stationed at RAF
Manston during the Battle ofBritain, and afterwards lived andworked on the South Coast.
How wonderful it was for me tosee the article and maps byJohn Tellick in the December
GEO Quarterly. What memories
it brought back. This latest
edition is well up to the highstandard you set from the
beginning. Congratulations.
Doug Thwaites, Queensland,
Australia.
Polar Mesospheric Clouds
Having only recently joined
GEO, I have just come acrossPeter Wakelin’s comments onpolar mesospheric clouds(PMCs) and their possible
visibility in satellite images [1]. I
discussed this with the lateProfessor Mike Gadsden someyears ago but was asked byhim not to mention it until hehad been able to publish apaper on the subject.
Professor Gadsden did In fact
publish three relevant papers [2,3,4] in which he reported being
able to detect PMCs in visiblelight Meteosat images, obtained

35

GEO Quarterly No 13

around local midnight when the satellite was in
eclipse, for the years 1983 to 2000. Under suchconditions the clouds were backlit and thus readily
detectable. He noted frequent changes instructure and height, with the clouds appearing asa single layer, a thickened layer, or double layers.
This he interpreted to mean that the PMCs wereactually a single thin layer with large-scale
undulations, most probably caused by planetary
waves.
It should be noted that, although closely related,
PMCs are differentiated from noctilucent clouds(NLCs), which are more frequently visible from theground, in that PMCs occur from the poles down
to latitudes of approximately 70°N and 70°S.
NLCs, by contrast, do not occur at latitudes higher
than about 60°N and 60°S, so there is a clear gapof about 5° to 10° between the two types. In
addition, although NLCs are also thought to occur
as a thin layer, their small-scale structure isbelieved to result from localised waves, possibly
even related to features on the surface. Peter
Wakelin’s observations of 2005 June 22/23 wereactually of noctilucent clouds, not PMCs.
Fewer PMCs were observed in the southernhemisphere than in the northern hemisphere,
presumably because of the different planetary-scale
flow regimes in the two hemispheres. Comparison of
the data for 341 northern-hemisphere occasions when
NLCs were reported shows that there is no correlation
between the occurrence of PMCs and NLCs: They
are independent phenomena.

References:
1 GEO Q7, September 2005, page 9
2 Gadsden, M., Structure in polar mesosphericclouds seen from a geostationary spacecraft,
Geophysical Research Letters, 27, (22), 2000, pp.
3671-3674
3 Gadsden, M., Structure of polar mesosphericclouds seen from a geostationary satellite,
Advances in Space Research, 27, (10), 2001, pp.
1697-1702
4 Gadsden, M., Polar mesospheric clouds: The
year-to-year changes shown in 17 years of images
from both hemispheres, Advances in Space
Research, 28, (7), 2001, pp. 1083-1088

Storm Dunlop
The Largest Tabular Iceberg
Further to your note (GEO Q12, Dec.2006, p.26)
on the break-up of the B15A iceberg, the original
section (B15) was not the largest tabular berg
ever known. That distinction belongs to an iceberg
discovered by the crew of a U.S. Coastguard
icebreaker in November 1956. It was 335 km longand 97 km wide, and thus had an area of about
32,400 sq.km. - that’s bigger than the size of
Belgium (30,528 sq.km).
In those pre-satellite days, tracking of icebergs
was not particularly easy, especially with thelimited number of ships in Antarctic waters, so thesubsequent fate of that monster is unknown.
An excellent image of B15, taken on 13 April
2000, shortly after it had broken away from theRoss Ice Shelf in late March, may be found at:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/
Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=2717

Storm Dunlop

36Group for Earth Observation

March 2007

El Niño Gains Strength
The weak El Niño event reported in
our previous issue continued to gainstrength during the final quarter of2006 and was rated as ‘moderate’ by
the World MeteorologicalOrganisation. By the end of the year,
El Niño was firmly established in thetropical Pacific Basin where sea
surface temperatures were already
1.5°C warmer than usual.
El Niño is a periodic warming
phenomenon in the central andeastern Pacific Ocean which upsets
normal weather patterns. Since El
Niño first appeared last August it hasbrought drought to Australia, which
has been hit by a combination ofunusually cold dry conditions andstrong winds, storms to islands in thewestern Pacific and extremely heavy
rainfall in Kenya, Somalia andEthiopia.
The December 5, the MODIS
spectroradiometer aboard NASA’s
Terra satellite obtained the image
opposite, which shows a swathe ofsmoke more than 25 kilometers wide
spreading southeast from fires inVictoria’s Great Dividing Range toward
the Tasman Sea. According to news
reports, 50 fires—most of them inremote forests and parks—wereburning out of control across Victoria
in early December. Australia’s miserycontinued throughout the month as
the December 11 true-color MODIS
image on the inside back covershows. It was not till early January
2007 that the rains came, the first foralmost five years in some districts,
disrupting play in both the 5th cricket
Test Match between Australia andEngland and the Australian Open
Tennis Championships.

Smoke from December 5 Forest Fires in Victoria
Image: MODIS Rapid Response Team

Tornado Strikes London, England
During 10 minutes of mayhem around
11 am on December 7, 2006, a small
tornado tore through the Kensal Rise
district of northwest London. In lessthan a minute over a hundred
Edwardian terraced houses situated ina network of tree-lined avenues weredamaged in the storm, the most
severely affected having entire roof
sections ripped off and walls
demolished as streets became strewn
with rubble. At least six people
suffered injuries and some twenty
properties were rendereduninhabitable.
The tornado was spawned by a squallline that crossed southwest England,bringing gales rain and thunder. The
NOAA-17 satellite image reproduced
opposite clearly shows the situation
shortly after midday, with the squallline located over the English Channel.
Douglas Deans sent in the 11:00 UT
radar image from AvBrief(www.avbrief.com) which appears on
the inside back cover. The bright red
www.geo-web.org.uk

This NOAA-17 channel-2 HRPT image was
acquired at 12:15 UT on December 7, 2006
Image: NOAA CLASS Archive (www.class.noaa.gov)

colours over London indicate the severity ofthe storms along the squall line.
The tornado itself was rated T4 on the TORRO
10-point scale, meaning localised winds
exceeding 160 kph. Great Britain actuallyexperiences between 30 and 40 tornadoes inan average year but most form well clear of
populated areas and many are relatively weak.

Europe’s Worst Storm for 8 Years
Europe suffered its deadliest storm since 1999
over January 18/19 this year, causing at least
47 fatalities in seven countries. Britain took thebrunt of the storm with severe gale force gustsof up to 159 kph being recorded. A million
consumers in Germany alone lost power while
airports across the continent were forced tocancel hundreds of flights.

March 2007

Group for Earth Observation

Mike Stevens sent us this image which he received via EUMETCast’s EARSAVHRR service on July 28 last year. The image came from the 16:54 UTNOAA-18 pass and shows a region of northern Canada inaccessible to thoseof us who rely on direct reception of APT or HRPT. Although Baffin Island is

GEO Quarterly No 13

almost completely obscured by cloud, both Devon Island and Ellesmere Islandshow well at upper centre, as do Victoria Island and Banks Island farther west.
The prominent peninsula at the top-left of the image is Cape Bathurst on the
Canadian mainland with, immediately below (east of) it, Franklin Bay.

Above and right are two more fascinating images cropped from a MetOp-A pass submitted byAlan Banks. Imaged at 07:25 UT on December 10 when the satellite was travelling southward
across east-central Africa, the raw data was disseminated via the MetOp world-wide, orbitdelayed high-resolution data stream on EUMETCast.
The image above shows much of the course of the Zambezi river as it flows along the ZambiaZimbabwe border and includes two of the largest human-made lakes in the world: Kariba Lake(left) impounded by the Kariba Dam and right of centre, highlighted by sunglint, Cahora Bassa
lake. There are large hydro-electric power plants at both Kariba and Cahora Bassa dams.
The image at right, part of the same MetOp-A pass, shows Lake Victoria, the largest body offresh water in Africa, engirdled by lakes Kyoga (top), Albert, Edward, Kivu and Tanganyika. Witha surface area just fractionally under 69 000 square kilometres, Lake Victoria is the largest
tropical lake on Earth and the second largest freshwater lake on the planet (only Lake Superior
in North America is larger).
Lake Victoria is the principal source of water for the 6695 kilometres long White Nile, although
the river’s most distant tributary flows from southern Rwanda and through Tanzania before
emptying into Lake Victoria.
Images © EUMETSAT 2006

www.geo-web.org.uk

37

GEO Quarterly No 13

Group for Earth Observation

The addition of trial MetOp global high-resolution AVHRR
imagery to the EUMETCast data stream late last year posed theinevitable questions as to the legality of posting images andderived products on readers’ websites. Graham Whitehead
undertook a lengthy dialogue with EUMETSAT which clarified
the situation. The types if data that you can legally display
on your websites are listed below and can be consulted at
http://www.satsignal.eu/software/publishing-data.htm

where further information may be added to cover additional
services on offer in the months and years ahead.
Meteosat Data and Products• The 6-hourly ‘essential’ Meteosat data; those images
received at 00:00, 06:00, 12:00 and 18:00 UT• Meteosat derived products• Data and products offered through the Meteosat Internet
Service• All SAF products
MetOp Data and Products• MetOp AHRPT (Advanced High Rate Picture
Transmission) data
• MetOp LRPT (Low Rate Picture Transmission) data
• MetOp global and regional level-1 MHS and IASI subset
products• MetOp global and regional level-2 MHS, ASCAT, GRAS,
GOME-2 and IASI products
NOAA Data disseminated through EUMETCast• MetOp AMSU-A data
• MetOp AVHRR data
• MetOp HIRS data
• NOAA AVHRR data

March 2007

• NOAA MHS data
• NOAA AMSU-A data
• NOAA HIRS data
Data that is more than 24 Hours Old
EUMETSAT data and products that are older than 24 hours
may be freely posted on websites regardless of whether you
yourself have stored them following download via EUMETCastor they have been retrieved from EUMETSAT’s own archive.
Acknowledging EUMETSAT’s CopyrightShould you display any data or products from the above
categories on your website you must include the text
‘Copyright EUMETSAT (year)’beside each item. If in doubt, check the numerous examples
printed in this Quarterly.
Meteosat Data that Requires a Licence
Meteosat licensed data and products comprise the 15-minute,30-minute, hourly and 3-hourly Meteosat image data plus alldata disseminated through the licensed Meteosat Internet
service. These products may not be placed on your website,
as the dissemination of these to third parties, which includes
Internet broadcasting, is forbidden.
MetOp Data that Requires a Licence
MetOp licensed data and products comprise all global andregional level-1 IASI (except for the above subset), ASCAT,GRAS and GOME-2 products. These products may not be
placed on your website, as the dissemination of these to third
parties, which includes Internet broadcasting, is forbidden.
If in doubt, send EUMETSat your query by completing theemail response form at:
http://eumetsat.int/Home/Head/Contact_Us/indes.htm... continued from page 9

island, with an area of 66 km2 and an estimated thickness of
37 metres a kilometre offshore. During the next few days it driftedsome 50 km west, then back east again, before freezing into thesea ice about 15 kilometres offshore. It has since remained
locked in this position throughout the summer of 2006. The
RadarSat image opposite, shows its location on December 31,
2006. It is believed that it is just a matter of time before theformer ice shelf is released, when it could become a potential
hazard to navigation and oil and gas extraction should it drift
south towards the Beaufort Sea.
Researchers suspect that the loss of the Ayles Ice Shelf is due to
Global Warming although they cannot conclusively prove that it
was a consequence of man-induced Climate Change. But taking
into account the events of the past hundred years, the breakup
was ‘consistent with the larger body of evidence indicating thatthe climate is warming and predictions that the greatest effects
are likely to take place at high latitudes’.

RADARSat image taken on December 31, 2006, clearly showing the detachedAyles ice island as the tooth-shaped object at lower left.
Image: Canadian Space Agency

38

Researchers believe that many more changes are in store andrecently, a Canada-U.S. team predicted that the Arctic Ocean
could be devoid of summer ice as early as 2040, if not possibly
sooner.

www.geo-web.org.uk

March 2007

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 13

Andrew Thornton
For the amateur weather buff who cannot
afford all the gear to receive real time
images from GOES, NOAA or MSG,
EarthBrowser will do this for you without
any special programs or hardware. The
software is available in shareware versions
for both Windows and Mac PCs and,
although some features are disabled in thefree version, it remains a fascinating pieceof software.
What is EarthBrowser?
EarthBrowser presents a real-time threedimensional model of the Earth with
continuously updating global information. It
uses an advanced ray-tracing algorithm
plus high resolution satellite imagery tocreate an extremely accurate picture of the
Earth. The globe can be easily rotated andmagnified to give a distant or close-up viewof our planet from space
Installation
EarthBrowser can be downloaded fromhttp://www.earthbrowser.com/

as a single installation file (8 MB for
Windows 2000/XP, 10 MB for Macintosh)which installs effortlessly on your computer.
System requirements are at least 128 MB
RAM, an installation of Quicktime and an
Internet connection. Should you enjoy
EarthBrowser you can register it for $23.95
and convert your existing demo version into
the fully functioning program.
Starting out
When you first run EarthBrowser the
program opens by displaying the default
view, a full globe of the Earth (figure 1).
Operation of the program is largely
controlled by the Tool Window, which is asmall panel containing 16 small icons
whose functions are indicated in theillustration below.

The four icons along the top row allow you
to navigate the screen, the bottom left
button opens a preferences dialogue andthe other seven toggle information overlay
displays.
Navigation Tools
The two zoom buttons allow you to alter
the scale of the display. The more you
zoom in, the more detailed the overlays
become. To enlarge the view, click the‘Zoom in’ tool, place the cursor over thecentre of the region of interest then holddown the mouse button until the desireddegree of zoom has been achieved(figure 2). The ‘Zoom out’ tool works thesame way. If the region of interest is not inview, click the ‘Rotate’ tool then drag themouse over the Earth to rotate it. The‘Default’ tool cancels all user adjustments
and returns to the default view of figure 1.
Weather Forecasts
When you click the Tool Window’s red‘Thermometer’ button, weather symbol
icons pops up over selected cities toindicate the prevailing conditions (sun,cloud, rain etc). See, for example, the‘sunshine’ icons over Glasgow, Prague andBudapest in figure 2. Further, when you
click over any such map location a
Weather Forecast Window appears
showing a summary of current weather
conditions. This includes the current
temperature, wind speed and direction,
humidity, pressure, visibility and dew point
as well as a 7-day forecast in the form of
iconised weather symbols for the week
ahead. A click on the ‘Camera’ button
displays the locations of webcams and,
when you click on one of these, an image
from that location is displayed. Figure 2
shows a zoomed map of Europe where
both the weather forecast window and thewebcam features have been selected for
Manchester. The Weather Forecast
Window is also shown in figure 4.
EarthBrowser holds data for thousands ofcities across the globe and their weather
data are updated hourly. More weather
icons become visible as you zoom incloser. Registered users can control thelevel at which an icon displays using theCity List Window.

The EarthBrowser Tool Window

The Weather Forecast Window also
displays the relevant national flag for thecity and clicking on this launches the CIA’s
World Factbook page for that country inyour web browser. This can prove an

www.geo-web.org.uk

Features of EarthBrowser• 15-meter per pixel resolution worldwide(only available in the registered version)• Three high-resolution 500-metre basemaps of the Earth• Satellite cloud overlays which are
updated daily• Global 7-day weather forecasts for over
17,000 locations• Live hurricane and tropical storm
tracking• A full year of weekly sea surface
temperature animations• Satellite cloud animations, which are
updated every 3 hours• Live earthquake map with magnitudes
and links• Live data for over 250 ocean buoys• Antarctic iceberg tracking• Daily fire hotspot display• Views from hundreds of webcams allover the globe• Political borders/Tectonic plateboundaries• Over 15,000 volcanoes with links tomore information• Times in cities of all world time zones• Links to facts about countries all over
the world

excellent source for educational information
about countries around the world.
CloudsClicking on the ‘Cloud’ button in the Tool
Window toggles the cloud overlay on andoff. This overlay is generated by combining
cloud information from geosynchronous
satellite images and stitching them
together. The global cloud montage iscontinuously updated every three hours
from midnight GMT. EarthBrowser can
download and store up to five days ofrecent cloud images and display them as amovie. You control the length of theanimated cloud sequence from the<Options→Cloud animation> sub-menu
which specifies how many hours (or days)of historical cloud data you wish to see
animated. In the demo version ofEarthBrowser, you can set this to show justthe current cloud cover (‘Now’) or ‘3 hours’and ‘6 hours’ but registration extends thisto a full five days of 3-hourly animation.
Satellite Overlay
The Satellite Overlay button toggles anoverlay of high-resolution cloud images

39

GEO Quarterly No 13

Group for Earth Observation

March 2007

approximately one day old over the display. These images have aresolution of 500 metres per pixel and match the underlying basemap exactly. The images are provided courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
and are updated daily at irregular times and only cover certain
areas of the globe.
StormsThe ‘Storms’ button displays any currently active tropical storms
across the world, the storm icons showing both the name andcurrent wind-speed of each storm. Also displayed, as a
Figure 4 - The weather forecast panel for Manchester

Figure 1 - The default Earth view showing city temperatures

Figure 5 - Overlay options

multicoloured line, is the path of the storm—each different colour
indicates the strength of the storm at the time its eye crossed thatlocation. Clicking on the storm icon opens a web page with more
information about it and other storms in the neighbourhood.
Sea Surface Temperatures
The ‘Sea Surface Temperature’ button toggles on and off an
animation sequence of weekly sea surface temperatures (an 8-day
average) for the previous year. A legend is displayed in the lower
left corner of the window to show the temperature scale and dateof the current animation frame. Sea surface temperature data is
obtained from the NASA Physical Oceanography Distributed Active
Archive Center.
Figure 2 - A zoomed image showing city temperatures in Europe

View Settings
The ‘View Settings’ button at the bottom left of the Toolbox Window
opens a panel from which you can control which features you wish
to see overlain upon the display: country borders, latitude/longitude
grid, country names, plate boundaries, location temperature, time,
coordinates and much more. This allows you to tailor maps to yourown taste. As with all the other options described above, anything
you select becomes the default until changed—so next time you
run it EarthBrowser will show exactly the same display (apart fromongoing cloud overlay and weather updates) as when you left it.
EarthBrowser is Shareware
EarthBrowser is a freely distributed, copyrighted program which isavailable without charge in demonstration mode. Many features,
however, are wholly or partially disabled. When zoomed, the cloud
overlay is somewhat blocky and quite low definition; you cannot add
new locations or webcams to the database; animations are restricted tojust six hours and there is no user control over the duration of sea
surface temperature animations.

Figure 3 - The same image with satellite cloud overlay toggled off

40

A ‘Register’ window repeatedly pops up asking you to purchase thefull product. although this can be closed by clicking the small circle
in its top left-hand corner. If you find the features of EarthBrowser
useful, registering the full version for just $23.95 is definitely well
worthwhile.

www.geo-web.org.uk

March 2007

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 13

Peter Wakelin

The Basics of Imaging Radar
An imaging radar works very much like a
flash camera in that it provides its own‘light’ to illuminate an area and take asnapshot picture—but at radio
wavelengths. Instead of a camera lensand film, a radar uses an antenna and acomputer.
A typical radar measures the strengthand round-trip time of the microwave
signals that are emitted from an antenna
and reflected off a distant surface. The
antenna alternately transmits andreceives pulses at particular microwave
wavelengths (in the range 1 cm to 1 m)
and polarisations (waves polarised in asingle vertical or horizontal plane). For
an imaging radar system, about 1,500
high-power pulses per second aretransmitted with each pulse having aduration (pulse width) of typically 10-50
microseconds. The pulse normally covers
a small band of frequencies centred on
the frequency selected for the radar. At
the Earth’s surface, the energy in thepulse is scattered in all directions withsome reflected back toward the antenna.
This backscatter is received by theantenna in a specific polarisation(horizontal or vertical but not necessarily
the same as the transmitted pulse) andthese echoes are converted to digital data
and recorded for later processing anddisplay as an image. The chosen pulse
bandwidth determines the resolution in
the range (cross-track) direction; greater
bandwidth means finer resolution.
In the case of imaging radar, the radar
moves along a flight path and the area
illuminated by the radar, or footprint, is
moved along the surface in a swath,building up the image as it does so. The
length of the radar antenna determines
the resolution in the along-track directionof the image; the longer the antenna, thefiner the resolution in this dimension.
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) refers toa technique used to synthesise a very
long antenna by combining signals(echoes) received by the radar as it moves
along its flight track. Aperture means the
opening used to collect the reflectedenergy that is used to form an image. A
synthetic aperture is constructed bymoving a real aperture or antenna
through a series of positions along theflight track.
As the radar moves, a pulse istransmitted at each position and thereturn echoes pass through the receiver

Figure 1 - Imaging different types of surface with radar

to an ‘echo store’. Because the radar ismoving relative to the ground, thereturned echoes are Doppler-shifted.
Comparing the Doppler-shifted frequency
to a reference frequency allows many
returned signals to be ‘focused’ on asingle point, effectively increasing thelength of the antenna. The trick in thisfocusing operation, or SAR processing, isto correctly match the variation in
Doppler frequency for each point in theimage, which requires precise knowledgeof the relative motion between theplatform and the imaged objects.
SAR is now a mature technique andprovides unique capabilities as an image
tool and, because SARs provide their own
illumination, can operate day and night.
Also, because radar wavelengths aremuch longer than those of visible andinfrared light, SARs can ‘see’ throughcloud and dust.
Interpreting Radar Imagery
In general, the rougher the surface being
imaged, the brighter the backscatter willappear on the image. Flat surfaces thatreflect little or no energy back towards
the radar will appear dark though, incities for example, multiple bounces
reflecting energy back to the radar can
result in flat surfaces appearing bright.
Vegetation is usually moderately roughon the scale of most radar wavelengths
and appears grey in images (figure 1).
Backscatter is also sensitive to thetarget’s electrical properties, including
water content; wet objects will appear
brighter than similar dry ones.
Backscatter will also vary depending on
the polarisation used and many SARs

This Shuttle Imaging Radar-C image showswidespread oil pollution (visible as black streaks)in the Bay of Bengal in October 1994
Credit: NASA/JPL

www.geo-web.org.uk

41

GEO Quarterly No 13

Group for Earth Observation

March 2007

can transmit using either horizontal (H) or
vertical (V) polarisation—and also receive ineither mode leading to four possiblecombinations. Differing observing angles
also affect the backscatter and, as mostSARs are side-looking, this angle varies
considerably across the imaged swath. In
addition, on some spacecraft, the radar
angle is adjustable, so the image swath is
not fixed relative to the spacecraft’s groundtrack.
From the above, it is clear that the raw dataneed very careful interpretation, and muchpost-reception processing is required toderive the maximum benefit from theinformation received.
Applications of Radar Images
Observations of the Earth using SAR have awide range of practical applications
including:On the Oceans:• Illegal dumping of oil or its accidental
spillage is readily detected in radar
images and observing natural seepage
from oil deposits can be useful to the oil
industry.
• Surface wind and currents can be
determined from the patterns in theimages.
• In shallow water, SAR imagery permits
one to infer the ocean floor topography.
• At high latitudes, ice monitoring is an
important use for radar images
enabling ice thickness, type andconcentration to be determined andopen leads detected.

This large ocean eddy, seen as near-circular concentric lines, was captured by ERS-1's SAR in
Shelikof Strait, Alaska on October 28, 1991. Eddies in this region are important for fisheries

On Land:

Credit: ESA• The ability of SAR to penetrate cloud
makes it valuable in monitoring theuse of land, especially in frequently
cloudy areas. For the same reason,
after a major cyclone, SAR imagery cangive early indications of the extent ofdevastation.
• Some geological features are enhanced
in radar images due to the oblique
viewing of the sensor and its ability topenetrate low-density vegetation cover.
• Interferometric SAR (InSAR) can beused, under suitable conditions, toderive elevation models or to detect
small surface movements caused byvolcanic eruptions, earthquakes or
glacier movement.
This brief introduction to SAR imaging
concludes with images derived fromsatellite-borne SAR. The US, Japan, Europe
and Canada all operate radar imaging
satellites and the next part will look at someof these programmes.
Acknowledgement
Much of the technical description of SAR
above has been abridged from a very
informative paper What is Imaging Radar?
by Tony Freeman of NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory which can be found at:
http://southport.jpl.nasa.gov

This image of the Kuskokwim River delta in Alaska was taken by Seasat's SAR on July 13, 1978and shows patterns formed by river water flowing around submerged sand bars
Credit: NASA/JPL

42

www.geo-web.org.uk

March 2007

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 13

Douglas Deans - dsdeans@tiscali.co.uk

Well, as anticipated in my last column,
the launch of MetOp-A has resulted in abrilliant new program from the keyboardof David Taylor. MetOp Manager was
released just a few days after the firsttrial MetOp data was made available
over the EUMETCast system. There is aseparate in-depth review of the newsoftware on page 25 of this issue, so I
have intentionally left the program
description below very basic. Please referto that article for a fuller appraisal of thesoftware and its uses. For those using the
EUMETCast system, or intending to doso, this new data allows you to view
5-channel, 1-km imagery of the entire
world. Now that is impressive!
There is not much else to report but I
note that Scott Hather, author of the wellknown Satscape software, has indicatedsome interest in a new approach to his
program, so that is something to lookforward to. I reproduce below an edited
extract from Scott’s website which gives
some details. Scott says:‘I had planned, one day, doing a Satscapefor Dot Net, but as this platform has yet
to materialise on other systems (asMicrosoft said it would), I’ve opted forJava instead. I didn’t know how toprogram in Java, so I’ve started learning.
The advantage of Java, of course, is that
it runs on about any platform. You write
it once and then the same program runs
on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Solaris,
most mobile phones and pocket gadgets:in fact anything that can run Javaapplications. The reason for the move isthat the current Satscape is written using
Visual Basic 6, which is getting old now,
has quite a few bugs in the language, andMicrosoft are no longer developing it. It
makes more sense to use one of the more
modern object oriented programming
languages and Java now seems the clear
winner. Anyway, I’ve just started work on
Satscape for Java, but don’t expect to see
it any day soon as it’s going to take time,
although I will put some early versions
on the site for you to try out—just to see

Write to the address below requesting
GS1, GS2, GS3, GS4 or GS5. Prices
are £5 for any single CD, 2 for £8, 3 for£11, 4 for £14 or all 5 for £17. Please
enclose cash or cheque (made payable
to Douglas Deans - not GEO please)for the appropriate amount. Nothingelse is required.
The cost includes CDs, packaging,posting and a small donation towards
the cost of overheads. No fee is asked
from overseas members although an
exchange of software or interestingsatellite images is always welcome.
Orders are normally dispatched on the
day of receipt.
Order your CDs from:
Douglas Deans, 17 Montrose Way,
Dunblane, Perthshire FK15 9JL,
Scotland.

MetOp Manager v 1.0.2
This is the excellent new program fromDavid Taylor. As customary with David’s
software there is a 30 day free trial of thefull product for evaluation. Thereafter, tocontinue using the program, registrationis required. My full review of thissoftware and some of the incredible
images it can produce appears on
page 25.

All D avi d Taylor's weather satelli te programs and li brari es, i ncludi ng the current releases of WXtrack,
GS1 Satsignal, HRPT Reader, GeoSatsignal, GroundMap, RX2 PassControl and many other program extras.
This disc also contains a large quantity of sample files, many of high-resolution data, for use with these
programs.
AVHRR Manager
Processes and manages the files for HRPT via EUMETCastv 1.3.0
GeoSatSignal

Manipulates Geostationary weather satellite images

v 6.0.6

GRIB Viewer

Viewer for GRIB format files

v 2.1.2

GroundMap

Rescales satellite images

v 2.0.4

HRPT Reader

Converts raw HRPT data files into images

v 2.6.8

Kepler Manager

Organises files of 2-line element data

v 1.2.8

MetOp Manager

Processes and manages AVHRR files from MetOp satellites

v 1.0.2

MSG Animatorv 2.5.4

RX2 PassControl

Automatic animation of MSG images following reception
Processes and manages the files received from MSG
satellites
Computer control program for the RX2 receiver

SatSignal

Creates images from wave files

v 5.0.4

WXtrack

Satellite Tracking Programv 3.6.2

MSG Data Manager

v 2.5.4

v 3.0.8

A wi de range of software for all aspects of weather satelli te recepti on, i ncludi ng tracki ng, recei vi ng,
GS2 monitoring and image manipulation. Content is detailed below but many other extras are provided. Titles
correspond with folder names. * implies a DOS program.
Collection D02
Recall (wave file recorder), Palette (modifies Wxsat colour palettes).
Scanner recorder v 1.8 (wave file recorder), *NOAA95/*FENG99 (software
Collection D03
for the NOAA 95 HRPT project)
Wxsat (wave file recorder/decoder), Satmon (wave file
Collection D04
v 2.59recorder).
AGSatTrack
Satellite tracking programv 1.33
APTDecoder
Cirkit

How to Purchase CDs

if they will actually run on otheroperating systems.’’

Element Manager

Program for capturing APT audio and processing images
v 1.0.3.72
Documents for the Cirkit Wxsat receiver and the UOSat receiver (PDF
format)2-line element manager
v 1.59

Footprint

Satellite tracking programv 2.10Irfan View

Image/slideshow viewer

v 3.80v 1.40 pre

JVcomm32

Evaluation version (APT/FAX/SSTV decoder)Macintosh kepler editor

Edits verbose AMSAT format elements. Mac OS X and OS9 only.

NeoPaint

Image processing program (30 day evaluation)

v 4.60

OrbitronSatellite Tracking Programv 3.70

Paintshop Pro

Image processing program (30-day evaluation)

PhotoFiltre

Image retouching program with many extras

v 6.1.5

Satscape

Satellite tracker and wave file recorder
v 2.02enerates TLE files in 'Celestrak' style from data sets recovered fromSpace-Track TLE Retriever GSpace Track
Splitter
Utility program for splitting and reuniting large files
WAV file recording and decoding program with many
WXtoImgv 2.7.3
options.
3DEM Package for 3D Terrain Visualisation
GS3 This CD includes the full set of GLOBE Tiles to allow you to produce excellent images and flybys from
HRPT inages. Also included is a selection of Mars MOLA files, sample images and helpful guides by Ed
Murashie.
Image CD
GS4 A wide selection of high-resolution remote images from a range of satellites, including stunning imagery
from the Space Shuttle missions. A full description and source if provided for each image.
Mars Rover Panoramics
GS5 A chronological account, in panoramic images, of the NASA Mars Rovers' progress across the MartianTerrainwww.geo-web.org.uk

43

GEO Quarterly No 13

MetOp Manager v 1.0.2 is available on
GEO software CD, GS1. For further
information, or to download the program
go to:
http://www.satsignal.eu/

NeoPaint v 4.6
Many of you will know this excellent
software which started life as a DOS
program and has developed to asophisticated graphics package.
Version 4.6 includes a ‘Create texture’
option in the Picture menu. This can beused to make repeating texture patterns.
NeoPaint describes a texture as a special
type of image that can be tiled to create aseamless filled area, background or
wallpaper. A ‘Copy Multiple’ option has
also been added to the Edit menu toallow duplication of a selected areamultiple times across an image. The
number of copies, direction and distance
between copies can be specified.
There are many other minor additions
and bug fixes. The software has a free 30day trial before registration is required
for further use.
NeoPaint v 4.6 is available on GEO
software CD, GS2 or for further
information and to download the program
visit:
http://www.neosoftware.com/npw.html

Powerless... continued from page 34

My recommendation is that, if you have notalready done so, you should buy or borrowa meter similar to mine [1] to enable you tomonitor the power consumption of yourelectrical equipment. These data will
enable you to decide whether you want toleave your system(s) on for extended
periods of time or only turn them on for
active use.
Sometimes in life I have to bury my head in
my hands with despair. I noticed recently
that politicians have been suggesting a tax
on tungsten filament incandescent lightbulbs because they consume more energy
than an equivalent fluorescent tube. As an
innocent bystander who only has low
energy bulbs throughout his house, I judge
I am competent to make a judgment
relating to this suggestion.
In my view the intellectual capacity of many
politicians is close to zero. Just because
somebody is a Minister doesn't mean they
are competent: it often means there is
nobody else to fulfil the job. I despise thesuggestion about taxing light bulbs—it’s
about as relevant as the mediaeval tax on
windows. If the government wants to get a
grip on this issue, let them legislate forelectrical manufacturers to position an

44

Group for Earth Observation

March 2007

on/off switch on the front of every appliancethey sell. No clandestine stand-by modes
running at 10 W! Just ensure that when theswitch is set to off, that's what it means—completely off.
If Ministers want an informed opinion about
energy-saving they can knock on my door
any time rather than publicly wallowing intheir own ignorance.
Reference
1 The meter I used was a WeTekom Energy
Meter bought from a catalogue. The costwas £10.
For a catalogue tel: 0800 083 5070 or visit
their web site at www.westfalia.net. I havebeen told that similar meters are available
from UK hardware shops, e.g. B & Q.

Earth Imaging News... continued from page 24

operating normally after separation. At
1,292 kg, excluding the DLA, this was theheaviest payload to be launched by the
PSLV which was originally designed to
put a 1,000 kg payload into a 900 km sunsynchronous orbit.
CartoSat-2, the twelfth in the Indian
Remote Sensing (IRS) series, is anadvanced remote sensing satellite
capable of providing scene-specific spot
imagery. It will join the other six IRS
satellites which are in service: IRS 1-C,
IRS 1-D, OceanSat-1, Technology
Experimental Satellite (TES),
ResourceSat-1 and CartoSat-1. It carries
a panchromatic camera with a resolution
better than one metre that can be steered
up to 45 degrees along and across the
track and will provide imagery for
cartographic applications. The National
Remote Sensing Agency in Hyderabad
began receiving imagery from CartoSat-2
soon after launch.
The Space Capsule Recovery Experiment
was a complete success; the capsule was
retrieved from the Bay of Bengal, not far
from its launch site, after a successful deorbit and splash-down precisely asplanned.
LAPAN-TUBSat is a cooperative venture
between the Indonesian Space Agency,
LAPAN, and the Technical University of
Berlin. The 56 kg satellite carries two
CCD cameras with ground resolutions of
5 m and 200 m and is returning imagery
as planned.
PehuenSat is a tiny, 6 kg package from
Argentina that will remain attached to
the DLA. Developed by the University of
Comahue in Argentina, AMSAT
Argentina and the Argentina Associationfor Space Technology, it is intended toprovide a platform for amateur radio
experiments between the colleges anduniversities of Argentina.
www.geo-web.org.uk

Storm Dunlop
An item in a recent issue of New Scientist
prompted me to discuss the suggestion in
GEO Q12, page 26 that the breakaway of
the tabular iceberg in Antarctica was an
example of the Butterfly Effect.
In fact, it was not. The so-called‘Butterfly Effect’ does not exist, although
it has come to be understood assuggesting that small actions may havelarge or even catastrophic results. But
this was not at all what Lorenz meant in1972 when he gave the lecture‘Predictability: Does the Flap of a
Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set off a
Tornado in Texas?’
To quote from my Dictionary of Weather:“Lorenz concluded, not that smallchanges would necessarily lead to large
effects, but that the question is currently
unanswerable and will probably remain
so for the foreseeable future. Errors inweather forecasting are inevitable andcome from inadequate data coverage,
incomplete knowledge of the underlying
physics and the fact that approximations
cannot be avoided in formulating theequations used for human or computer
predictions. The term—formally known as‘sensitive dependence on initialconditioning’—should be used to suggestthat there are limits to predictability, notthat such an effect exists.”
Edward Lorenz discusses this on pages
14 and 15 of his book, The Essence of
Chaos (University of Washington Press,
Seattle, 1993), where he points out that asmall event could just as well prevent a
major effect at a later time. Lorenz
originally used a seagull as anillustration of sensitive dependence. Thechange (to ‘butterfly’) was made by thesession convener, who was unable tocheck with Lorenz when submitting
programme titles. Lorenz also mentions
how Ray Bradbury wrote a short story
where the death of a prehistoric butterfly
affected the outcome of a present-day
presidential election, and how Stewart, in
his novel, Storm, suggested that a mansneezing in China could result in people
shovelling snow in New York.
Lorenz lays the blame—if such it is—for
popularising the erroneous conception of
the Butterfly Effect on James Gleick andhis book Chaos. It may have arisen fromthe butterfly shape of the ‘strange
attractor’ that Lorenz found when he
examined the first chaotic system.

A radar image provided by Douiglas Deans, depicting the squallline that produced the London tornado on December 7, 2006
Image © AvBrief

Continuing our occasional ‘bird’ theme, Francis Breame
submitted this photograph showing a rogue peahen (not hisown) taking an interest in his EUMETCAST dish antenna.

Bush fires rage in the Great Dividing Range of Victoria, Australia in this Terra MODIS image dating from December 11, 2006
NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center