Group for Earth Observation

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

34
June 2012
Inside this issue . . .
This image of the Aral Sea
heralds a treatise from Les
Hamilton describing theongoing developments
aimed at improving waterflow in the Northern Aral
Sea basin.
For the electronic
constructors among you,there is a construction
article from Guy Martin,
who shares his
experiences in building abarometer based on areadily available digitalpressure sensor.
Esko Petäjä recently spenta holiday in Grand
Canaria, where the
EUMETSAT Maspalomas
receiving station is located.
Esko describes what hesaw in an illustrated
essay.
Several of the worlds
volcanoes have been
putting on a show inrecent months: there areillustrated features on
Shiveluch, Etna,
Popocatépetl and PuyehueCordon.
... plus further articles on
the Ganges Delta, Urban
Heat Islands, Arctic Sea
Ice, and Building a silent,
Fanless EUMETCast PC.

GEO MANAGEMENT TEAM
Director and Public Relations
Francis Bell,
Coturnix House, Rake Lane,
Milford, Godalming, Surrey GU8 5AB,
England.
Tel:
01483 416 897
email: francis@geo-web.org.uk
General Information
John Tellick,email: info@geo-web.org.uk
GEO Quarterly Editor
Les Hamilton,
8 Deeside Place,
Aberdeen AB15 7PW, Scotland UK.
email: geoeditor@geo-web.org.uk
GEO Quarterly Despatch
Peter Green
Membership and Subscriptions
David Anderson,
35 Sycamore Road,
East Leake, Loughborough LE12 6PP,
England, UK.
email: members@geo-web.org.uk
Tel:01509 820 067
Fax:
01509 559 015
Technical Consultant (Hardware)David Simmons
email: tech@geo-web.org.uk
Webmaster and Website Matters
Alan Banks,e-mail: webmaster@geo-web.org.uk
Education Coordinator
David Painteremail: education@geo-web.org.uk
GEO Shop Manager
Clive Finnis (Assistant: David Simmons),
email: tech@geo-web.org.uk
International Liaison
Rob Denton,
email: international@geo-web.org.uk
Nigel Evansemail: nigel@geo-web.org.uk

Publisher
Published by The Group for Earth
Observation Limited, a company in Englandand Wales, limited by guarantee and nothaving share capital.
The Company Number is 4975597.
The registered office is Coturnix House,
Rake Lane, Milford, Godalming,
Surrey GU8 5AB, England.
Printing
Hedgerow Print,
16 Marsh Lane,
Crediton, Devon EX17 1ES.
Tel: 01363 777 595
Responsibility
Every effort is made to ensure that thetechnical and constructional articles
published in this Quarterly are correct.
However, the ultimate responsibility iswith the reader to ensure the safety of
constructions and for any interfacing withother equipment. GEO cannot accept liability
for shortcomings in any published design or
any constructions carried out by members orother third parties.
Copyright GEO © 2012
The contents of this Quarterly remain theintellectual property of the Group for Earth
Observation Limited and its contributors.
Copying of text or images, either from theprinted Quarterly or from any electronicallystored source, is forbidden without
permission from the Editor.

Les Hamilton
geoeditor@geo-web.org.uk

I

t’s been very much a race against time getting this issue of GEO Quarterly published onschedule. Francis Bell was on holiday during April and I set off on my own vacation on
May 1, the day following copy deadline. The situation was not helped by a major lack of article
contributions from the membership: no copy at all was received during the six weeks frommid-March till the end of April, normally the busiest period. As a result, there is much less toread in this issue, the shortfall being made up by increased use of imagery from NASA andNOAA sources. This really does beg the question: ‘Is there any demand for GEO to produce an
expensive glossy magazine these days?’ With the membership now drifting down into the 300s, I
have to ask myself if it’s worth my output of over 100 man-hours of effort to produce each issue.

IHt would be interesting to learn your views on how to boost membership numbers, and alsosuggestions for sourcing expert articles relevant to the interests of GEO Quarterly readers.

ot and cold are the underlying themes in this issue of GEO Quarterly, with several imagesof both volcanoes and the Arctic on view. You are reminded of the ongoing Volcano
Challenge, where we are looking for readers’ satellite images including volcanoes. This was
intimated by Francis Bell in the March issue, and continues till the end of 2012. Please send yourimages featuring volcanoes, whether erupting or passive, to francis@geo-web.org.uk. The
best ones will be published in upcoming issues of GEO Quarterly: you can read more about this
topic on page 7. Thus far, I haven’t received any contributions from readers, but I’m hoping that
Francis will ﬁnd his mailbox bulging with volcanic imagery when he returns from holiday.

I’m indebted to John Heath for pointing me in the direction of a fascinating, new experimental
satellite launched earlier this year from Hungary. You can read about this amazing miniatureorbiter on page 35. And while on the subject of small satellites, I’ve included two recent images
from Sich-2 on page 44: this satellite really is proving a revelation in terms of the quality of its
output.

Not long before going to press came the disappointing news that ESA’s ﬂagship Earthorbiting satellite, Envisat, was in difﬁculties, all contact with the craft having being loston April 8. At the time of writing there is still no deﬁnite news as to whether Envisat’s systems
can be restored, but the overriding mood seems to be one of increasing gloom. As a stop-gap
measure, the Envi-Ham project continues, ﬁlling the void by transmitting older imagery that has
not previously been seen. We will cover this situation, as the story unfolds, in the September
issue of GEO Quarterly.

Contents
GEO Report
Cover and Full Page Images
Quarterly Envi-Ham image and Quarterly Question
Franz Josef Land
Etna Erupts
Volcano Challenge
Urban Heat Islands
Syr Darya Control and Northern Aral Sea Project
Oldest Arctic Sea Ice is Disappearing
GEO’s Updated Website
Snow Cannon
Build a Silent Fanless PC for EUMETCast
Winter Cloud Streets
Farewell Atlantis
Build a Barometer using a Digital Pressure Sensor
The Maspalomas Satellite Reception Centre
The Ganges Delta
Europe’s Incredible Winter
MaSat-1: Hungary’s First Satellite
Shiveluch Erupts
Feedback: Readers Letters
Cyclones Funso and Giovanna
Popocatépetl Awakes
Sich-2 Showcase
Puyehue-Cordón Caulle
Helplines and Internet Discussion Groups
Copy deadline for the next issue of GEO Quarterly
GEO Membership Application FormGEO Shop Catalogue and Price List

Francis Bell
Francis Bell
NASA Earth Observatory
John Tellick
Francis Bell
Robert Moore
Les Hamilton
NASA Earth Observatory
Les Hamilton
Anders Höök
Angus Crawford
John Tellick
NASA Earth Observatory
Guy Martin
Esko PetäjäJohn Tellick
Les Hamilton
Les Hamilton
NASA Earth Observatory
John Tellick
NASA Earth Observatory
Dniprokosmos
NASA Earth Observatory

2
3
4
5
7
7
9
10
16
18
18
19
21
23
24
26
28
31
35
36
37
38
41
44
45
46
46
47
48

GEO Quarterly No 34

The Group for Earth Observation

June 2012

Cover and Full Page Images

From the Editor
With Francis on holiday during April, and myself likewise formost of May, this has created something of a vacuum as far
as the GEO Report is concerned: so I’ve taken the initiative
to prepare this short column to keep you up to date.
GEO’s Main Event for 2012
Just before he left, Francis sent me an email to state that
there would be no GEO Symposium as such this year.
However, he was very much hoping that the forthcoming
visit to Surrey Satellite Technology’s new Space Centre(located in the Surrey Research Park, Guildford) on Friday,
June 8, would become GEO’s Main Event for 2012. We lookforward to meeting many of you there.
SSTL is an independent British company which has
specialised in the production and delivery of small satellites
for over a quarter of a century. Their Space Centre is notopen to the general public, and GEO’s invitation to a guided
tour of their new facilities is a unique opportunity. GEO also
hopes to have the use of a meeting room with facilities fordisplays and demonstrations.
Everyone interested in joining GEO on this visit should
register their details with Rob Denton, by email, tointernational@geo-web.org.uk

so that you can be kept informed of developments. It is
likely that further details of arrangements for this visit willappear on the GEO website nearer the time.
USB Receivers for EUMETCast
Early this year, the GEO Shop’s supply of the popular DVB
World USB receivers for EUMETCast reception became
exhausted when our former supplier was unable to source
new units. Locating a new supplier proved troublesome,and for some time the Shop was unable to provide memberswith a receiver. As you will see from this quarter’s advert(page 48), the GEO Shop has at last sourced new stocks(of two different models). As yet, prices have not been
ascertained but you can email this address for details andcurrent prices.
tech@geo-web.org.uk

GEO Website
Readers who have visited the GEO website since mid-April
should have been pleasantly surprised to find that it is in
the process of a major makeover. We are indebted to Alan
Banks for his hard work in taking the GEO web pages
forward with a bright and breezy new look. You can readmore about the website in a short article on page 18.
Envisat and the Envi-Ham ProjectIn early April, ESA’s ground controllers suddenly lost all
contact with Envisat, bringing to an end the flow of superbly
detailed imagery enjoyed by readers who had signed up with
the Envi-Ham project.
At the time of writing, ESA still has hopes of regaining
control of Envisat, which remains in a stable orbit, but thesigns are non too encouraging.
As an interim measure, though, the Envi-Ham projectcontinues to provide image downloads, falling back on ESA’s
sizeable archive of imagery from earlier years, as yet unseen
by users.

2

Front CoverThis image of the Aral sea, captured by the MERIS imager aboard
ESA’s Envisat orbiter on October 15, 2011, was sent in by reader Mike
Stevens, and inspired the article on the Aral Sea recovery programme,that begins on page 10.
Image: ESA

Inside Front Cover
Anthony Lowe from St Helens captured this fine NOAA-19 APT imageat 11:59 UT on March 15, 2012, showing North Sea fog covering thewest side of the UK.
Inside Back Cover (upper image)
By way of contrast with the image on the front cover, Mike Stevens
provided this Envisat MERIS image showing the Aral Sea in theprocess of shedding its winter coat of ice on March 21 this year.
Image: ESA

Inside Back Cover (lower image)
Another of Mike Steven’s Envisat images from the Envi-Ham project,
this one shows detail in the English Channel on March 6, 2012.
Image: ESA

Back CoverThis image showing the Netherlands in winter’s icy grip is a segmentfrom a MODIS image from NASA’s Terra satellite dating back to
February 10, 2012.
Image: NASA/GSFC, Rapid Response Team

Page 3It’s April 4, 2012, and NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image
showing the Arctic ice cap spawning a flotilla of ice floes as it started its
seasonal break-up north of Svalbard in the Barentsz Sea.
Image: NASA/GSFC, Rapid Response Team

Page 6
The Kamchatkan volcano Bezymianny commenced an explosive
eruption at 21:27 UT on March 8, 2012, ejecting a massive plumeof ash to an altitude of almost nine kilometres, and which stretched
220 km to the northeast. This channel‑2 AVHRR image was acquired
by Metop‑A exactly two hours into this eruption, and shows theash cloud and its shadow on the snow-covered terrain very clearly.
Interestingly, the volcano’s name, Bezymianny, translates as ‘volcano
without a name’.
Image: NOAA CLASS Archive

Page 8Fred van den Bosch sent in this beautiful NOAA 15 APT image heacquired from Vietnam at 16:32 UT on February 23 this year.
Page 15This MODIS image from the NOAA Terra satellite, acquired on
February 8, 2012, shows the Arctic winter starting to relax its grip
over northern Europe. Already there are signs of ice melting round thecoastline of the White Sea and the Kanin peninsula.
Image: NASA/GSFC, Rapid Response Team

Page 30This splendid Envisat MERIS image of part of the Arctic island of
Spitzbergen was sent in by Peter Burden. Acquired during a rare cloudfree spell on March 25 this year, the low, late-afternoon sun highlights
the mountainous nature of this island.
Image © ESA

Page 39
This superb image of cloud-free Great Britain was provided by David
Taylor. A NOAA‑19 AVHRR image acquired from the 13:17 UT pass on
March 26, 2012, it coincided with a massive area of high pressure thatbrought a record-breaking temperature of 24°C to northeast Scotland.

www.geo-web.org.uk

Image © EUMETSAT 2012

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

www.geo-web.org.uk

GEO Quarterly No 34

3

GEO Quarterly No 34

The Group for Earth Observation

June 2012

Francis Bell
This Quarterly Question is somewhat unusual
because I don’t know the answer myself—hence it may be more appropriately titled as the
Quarterly Query.
The query relates to an Envisat image I received
recently via the Envi-Ham project (right). I haveto admit to being attracted to images whichhave some degree of a ‘wow’ factor associatedwith them; or perhaps I relate to them in somepersonal way when they come from a part of
the world I know well or have visited. Often,
my attraction is to images which may not haveany special geographical, oceanographic or
meteorological dimensions. In the northern
winter, with Europe often cloud covered or
dimly illuminated, I often find myself looking
opportunistically at images of Africa or otherparts of the world covered by Envi-Ham and
EUMETCast transmissions.
This particular image covers part of southern
Egypt and northern Sudan, and includes theconspicuous river Nile, made clearer becauseof the agriculture along its banks. I have cruisedalong part of the Nile from Luxor to Aswan andhave also walked along a short section of the
Aswan High Dam, hence my personal interestin this river. I also have memories of splendid
views enjoyed while flying over Khartoum, which islocated at the junction of the White and Blue Niles.

This Envisat image was acquired at 07:53 UT on January 28, 2012. The flooded region iscentred approximately 18°45’N, 32°E and shows as a dark swelling on the Nile at upper left.
Image © EUMETSAT 2012

I looked in detail at the satellite image, identifying the courses of the
Nile and other rivers. Areas of cultivation stood out clearly, showing
in a darker colour compared with the lighter surrounding deserts.
Also visible within the image are irrigation circles, identifiable bytheir darker colour and geometric layout. I understand that mostof these circular areas support several crops of alfalfa per year.
It’s interesting to note the variation in the colour of these circles ascrops grow and are harvested throughout the year.
However, what caught my eye in this image was what looks likea substantial water reservoir along the course of the Nile. I was
not expecting to see such a feature because I know nothing
about a dam or reservoir in this location. I zoomed in and out of
the image and viewed different channel colour combinations, butultimately came to the conclusion that what I was looking at was alarge reservoir. I was sufficiently intrigued to investigate the area
using my reference atlases and books containing satellite imagesof the area but could find nothing which illustrated my ‘mysteryfeature’. I eventually came to the conclusion that the feature seenon the image is a consequence of a new dam construction with its
associated reservoir; so new that it is not illustrated on maps orvisible on old satellite images.

Nile. However, for better or worse, the construction of the Aswan
High Dam has brought an end to these traditional flood seasons
along this lower reach of the Nile. But what about a dam higher up
the river?
Please, can any reader tell me the background to the feature whichlooks like a reservoir just up-stream of the Nile’s Fourth Cataract.
Of course, I will watch this area in future satellite images I may
receive, looking for changes which may indicate either seasonal
flooding or a dam construction. Please write to the editor with yourthoughts and explanations.

My research did reveal that the location of the apparent newreservoir is just upstream of the Nile’s ‘Fourth Cataract’. It occurred
to me that heavy rain elsewhere in the Nile’s catchment area could
have generated elevated water levels such that the river was
unable to negotiate the Cataract without backing up and producing
local flooding.
I know that historically the Nile has periodic flood seasons with thereceding water leaving deposits of fertile mud behind and that thesefloods were a vital factor for the fertility of lands close to the lower

4This an enlarged section of the above image showing the confluence of theWhite and Blue Niles at Khartoum. Agricultural patterns can be clearly seen.

www.geo-web.org.uk

Image © EUMETSAT 2012

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 34

A NASA Earth Observatory Report

Russia’s northernmost territory is Franz Josef Land, an archipelagoof almost 200 islands at 80°N, straddling the Arctic where the
Barentsz and Kara seas meet. Frequently shrouded by cloud andfog, the skies opened at the height of summer on August 17, 2011,
to reveal this island group to the Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Terra satellite.
Clouds fringe this natural colour scene, like curtains held back froma window. Around the islands, sea ice forms serpentine shapes oflight grey and dull white. The glaciers that cap many of the islands
are bright white. Situated about 1,000 kilometres from the North
Pole, Franz Josef Land has a punishing climate with an averagesummer temperature of just 2°C: the highest temperature everrecorded was just 13°C. In winter, this average falls to -22°C: a lowof -54°C has been recorded. Glaciers cover roughly 85 percent of
the land and sea ice floats in the channels between the islands,
even in summer.
In ice-free areas, land cover is pale brown, typical of tundra. The
archipelago has been built from Tertiary and Jurassic basalts and,though predominantly ice-covered, there are some areas covered
with moss, and supporting lichens and a few Arctic flowering plants
such as the alpine saxifrage. Despite the harshness of the climate,Franz Josef Land does support limited native wildlife, mostly
walrus, arctic fox, polar bear and seals and beluga whales. In
summer, visiting birds include kittiwakes, fulmars, and gulls.
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response, NASA/GSFC

www.geo-web.org.uk

5

GEO Quarterly No 34

6

The Group for Earth Observation

www.geo-web.org.uk

June 2012

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 34

John Tellick

Mount Etna, Europe’s most active volcano, situatedon the east coast of Sicily, erupted briefly during thenight of February 8/9 following several eruptions during
January 2012. Etna is one of three active European
volcanoes, all in Italy: Etna, Stromboli and the ‘infamous’
Vesuvius, though this last has not erupted since 1944.

Figure 1
A Meteop-A channel-3 image acquired at 19:48 UT
on February 8 shows a hot spot in the crater ofsnow-covered Etna prior to the eruption.
Image © EUMETSAT 2012

Italy is a volcanically active country, mainly due to themeeting of the Eurasion and African plates to the south ofthe country.
The satellite images from Metop‑A, NOAA-19 and Meteosat-9
show the situation before, during and after the eruption.

Figure 2
This NOAA-19 channel-3 image taken at 01:25 UT
on February 9 shows an enlarged hotspot during
the eruption, accompanied by an ash cloud

Figure 3
Meteosat-9 HRV 08:00 09-02-12, eruption ceased
and cloud trail which remained for a few hours.
Image © EUMETSAT 2012

Image © EUMETSAT 2012

Francis BellEl Pico del Teide
The image opposite is my own
submission for the ‘Volcano Challenge’announced in GEO Quarterly 33.
The challenge is to submit a satellite
image of any volcano, received live athome using APT, HRPT, EUMETCast
or Envi-Ham (but not via Internet
download). In my image of Tenerife
in the Canary Islands, received via
the Envi-Ham project, I was able toidentify Pico del Teide, located close to
the centre of the island. I have in fact
seen this volcano while on a fishingboat midway between Gran Canaria
and Tenerife, and it was an impressive
sight: more so than my fish catch,which was zero. The high relief of the
volcano can be assessed within theimage by identifying the ring of cloud
which surrounds the central peak.
This peak is above the ring of cloud,which I would guess to be about half
way up the volcano. Relief is not easy toquantify from a satellite image: shadowsand snow cover help, but in this casethe halo of cloud was a nice give-away.
I researched information relating to Picodel Teide, and discovered it to be 3,718
metres high. Impressively, if the heightof the volcano were measured from thesurrounding ocean bed, Pico del Teide is
the third highest volcano in the world,
only surpassed by Mauna Loa andMauna Kea in Hawaii.
The last major eruption of Pico delTeide was in 1909 but it is still active
today, and further eruptions, without
a known time scale, are anticipated indue course. The Spanish authorities
have created a National Park around
Pico del Teide and this area is now wellvisited by tourists. In 2007 this area
was designated by UNESCO as a World
Heritage Site.
Further details of Pico del Teide andTenerife, together with satellite images
more detailed than mine, can be foundon the Internet. Try the following as
examples of places to look:• http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/
IOTD/view.php?id=39621• http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Teide• or just try searches for ‘Teide’.
Further Entries
All readers are reminded of theinvitation to submit an image

www.geo-web.org.uk

This Envisat image of Tererife, with the central
summit of Pico del Teide prominent, was received
by Francis Bell using his Envi-Ham system,comprising a one metre dish, DVBWorld receiver
and a modest computer running free software
provided by ESRIN/ESA, on January 25, 2012.
Envi-Ham image © EUMETSAT 2012

containing a volcano (or perhaps
several volcanoes) from anywhere in
the world, acquired from any satellite.
Please respond to this invitation tomaintain interest in this topic. Our
planet is so geologically active that this
topic can never be exhausted.

7

GEO Quarterly No 34

8

The Group for Earth Observation

www.geo-web.org.uk

June 2012

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 34

Robert Moore

On the evening of March 27, NOAA‑16
produced this very fine channel‑3 HRPT
image as it passed over my station.
What makes this image so special isthat, even although it is entirely infrared,
it nevertheless appears to give highresolution. We are all used to seeing‘heat islands’ in images: areas where
the concrete, tarmac and bricks of urban
locations have warmed up and radiate
infrared wavelengths back towards thesatellite. But this particular image appears
to show virtually every small town in the UK.
Furthermore, the image actually enables
us to distinguish the ‘hotter’ inner areas of
the cities from their cooler outer suburbs.
This can be clearly seen in the inset imagesof London and Birmingham, and similardifferentiation is apparent for Manchesterand Paris, although not quite so markedly.

Among the very small towns, my own,
Holywell, is only about two kilometres
square, but it can just be seen as a tiny
black dot in the original image on screen.
This image was so striking that I dropped
a copy into the local secondary school,
where I am a governor, suggesting it
might be used for a geography test. The
image is now on display in the Geography
Department.
How did this exceptional image comeabout? I think there were at least two
factors at work. Firstly there was a seasonal
factor: it was at the end of winter, and theground temperature was 8.5° on the 27th.
The UK had just experienced a short spellof very hot weather, with high pressure
and cloudless skies. The maximum airtemperature from the 24th to the 26th wasabove 19°C at my weather station, and on

www.geo-web.org.uk

the 27th it reached 21.3°C. Thus, I suspect,
the urban areas had heated up very rapidly
while the ground was only just beginningto warm. This maximised the temperature
difference between town and country. In
mid-summer, when the land has warmed,
there would be a smaller difference,thus rendering the smaller settlements inparticular, less visible. Secondly, the air wasvery dry and clear, giving optimum viewing
conditions down from space. NOAA‑16
does not always give the best of images,
but on March 17, it excelled itself.

Close-up (x2) images of the London (left)
and Birmingham heat islands.

9

GEO Quarterly No 34

The Group for Earth Observation

June 2012

Les Hamilton
Reader Mike Stevens is one of GEO’s ever-growing band of
Envi-Ham enthusiasts, who uses the project to download
some of the spectacular imagery acquired by ESA’s Envisat
advanced polar-orbiting Earth observatory. Mike sent in theimage of the Aral Sea that graces the front cover of this issue.
Dating back to October 15, 2011, the image shows clearly thecontrasts between the three remaining sections of the Aral
Sea, once the world’s fourth largest lake.
The Aral Sea has been featured previously in GEO
Quarterly [1,2,3]. Mike’s timely image, the fact that it is now
two full years since the Aral Sea was last discussed in
our pages, and a report from NASA detailing ten years of
Terra observations of the sea, provided me with the impetus
to investigate its current status.
The Aral Sea Catastrophe
The Aral Sea, which half a century ago was the world’s
fourth-largest inland lake, is located in the desert east of
the Caspian Sea. It is fed by central Asia’s two great westflowing rivers, the Syr Darya in the north and Amu Darya
in the south (Map 1). These rivers annually channel glacial
meltwater from the Tian Shan mountains into the Aral Sea.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the Soviets built massive dams
and canals to extract water from the Amu Darya and Syr
Darya for irrigation, primarily directed towards extensive
cotton fields in the deserts of central Asia. By 1980, the Aral
had shrunk to just 17% of its original surface area and 9%of its former volume, the water becoming so salty that thetwenty or so endemic species of freshwater fish had diedout. Salt and dust from pesticide and fertiliser residues left
on the exposed sea floor were spread far and wide by winds,
resulting in severe health and environmental problems. In theearly 1960s, a flourishing fishing industry was the mainstayof the local economy, an annual catch of 22,000 tonnes offish providing employment for 3000 people at the Aral’sk fishprocessing plant. By 1980 the annual catch was down to2300 tonnes and, faced with unemployment, many families
in Aral’sk and its surrounding villages relocated to the cityof Kyzylorda, 450 kilometres away. Figure 3 is a Landsat
image showing the Aral Sea as it appeared in 1973, before its
decline began in earnest.

Figure 1 - An abandoned ship, high and dry on the seabed near Aral’sk.
Photo: Christopher Staeker / Wikimedia Commons

10

Map 1
The Aral Sea Basin, with its feeder rivers the Syr Darya and Amu Darya.
The 2003 Aral Sea shoreline is shown, shaded darker blue.

Figure 2 - This Landsat mosaic shows the Aral Sea in 1973, before its area
became significantly reduced by water abstraction from its feeder rivers.
Image: NASA/USGS

www.geo-web.org.uk

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 34

By 1990, damage to the Aral Sea was sosevere that it had split into two parts:
the Northern Aral Sea in Kazakhstan
and the larger Southern Aral Sea,shared with Uzbekistan. The desiccationof the Aral basin resulted in serious
economic, social and environmental
damage. Fresh fish production
virtually disappeared as the salinityand pollution levels rose, and tensof thousands of jobs were lost in thefishing, agriculture and service sectors.
Many ships were abandoned high anddry on the exposed seabed, and simply
left to rust (figure 1).
The North Aral Sea Project - Phase 1
In June 2001, the World Bank approved
a loan of US$64.5 million towards
the Syr Darya Control and Northern
Aral Sea Project, with the primaryaims of increasing agriculture andfish production along the Syr Darya,securing the continued existence of
the Northern Aral Sea, and improving
ecological conditions in its basin. With
the Kazakh government providing thebalance of the $85 million financerequired to undertake the project,
work finally got underway in 2003. By
this time, the Aral Sea’s shoreline had
receded more than 100 kilometres fromAral’sk, and its water level had dropped
from an original 53 metres above meansea level in 1960 to just 30 metres asl.

Figure 3 - The Kokaral Dam

Photo: David Trilling - EurasiaNet.org

Figure 4 - Water pours through the Kokaral spillway
Photo: Panoramio / GoogleEarth

The dominant feature of the recovery
scheme was the construction of
the thirteen kilometre long Kokaral
dam—an extensive concrete levee, ordyke—which was completed in August
2005 (figure 3). This barrier effectively
ended the spillage of water through theBerg Strait into the Southern Aral Sea,
thus allowing the Northern Aral Sea torecover. The dam contains hydraulicgates and spillways (figure 4) which
prevent it overflowing by discharging
excess water to the south. This
maintains the sea’s level at the desired
42 metres above mean sea level.
The dam alone was not sufficient toeffect recovery of the sea. It was also

Map 2 - Map of the Northern Aral Sea highlighting the Phase-2 strategy.

essential to undertake measures toensure that more fresh water entered
the Northern Aral Sea by increasing theflow capacity of the Syr Darya through:• building several new dams on theriver,• repairing and improving irrigation
works upstream,• restoring existing flood barriers
and building new ones to reducewater loss,• straightening the river bed at
strategic points, and• restoring fishing lakes in the deltaregion, to serve as hatcheries fromwhich to restock the Northern Aral
Sea’s fish population.
Devastating winter floods had long beena regular occurrence throughout long
stretches of the lower Syr Darya valley,
and particularly severe episodes inrecent years had displaced thousands ofpeople from affected areas and caused
millions of dollars worth of damage.
Water that should have reached theAral Sea was spilling out of the riverand being lost. With the completionof the first phase of the recovery
project in 2008, not only was theremuch improved irrigation for farmland
within the river basin, but even more
importantly, a significantly increased
flow of water was now entering theNorthern Aral Sea each year.
It was originally anticipated that theNorthern Aral Sea would not rise to its
projected 42 metre level for about five
years but, just eight months after the
dam’s completion, during the summerof 2006, water was already being
released over the Kokaral’s spillway.
The dam had raised the surface of theNorthern Aral by eight metres andincreased its area by 30%. Salinity had

www.geo-web.org.uk

dropped by half and freshwater fish
such as pike, perch, carp and catfish(which had taken refuge in the Syr
Darya), were making their way backinto the sea. Progress continued apace,and by early 2008 the Northern Aral
Sea had risen the full twelve metresabove its 2003 low point to reach the
42 metre benchmark, helping to restoredeltaic and riverine wetland ecosystems
and promoting a rapidly increasing fish
population.
Now, six years after the Kokaral Dam’s
completion, the Northern Aral Sea,
which had receded almost 100 km
south of the port of Aral’sk, stands
just under 25 km away, and its
surface area has increased from a low
point of 2,550 km2 to 3,800 km2, anincrease of 50% over its 2003 area.
The fish biomass in the Northern Aral
Sea has jumped from 3,500 tonnes to
18,000 tonnes and, although fishing isstrongly regulated, fishermen are now
landing 6,000 tonnes annually.

Figure 5 - A woman shows off one of the fishcaught that day in a fish shop in Aral’sk
Photo: David Trilling - EurasiaNet.org

Before the dam was built, people wereleaving the region in droves; now they
have started returning. New houses,
schools and hospitals are being built
in villages throughout the area. In

11

GEO Quarterly No 34

2008, a new fish processing plant that
opened in Aral’sk, with a design capacity of
8,000 tonnes per year, has created 41 newjobs. A billboard outside Aral’sk, official
population 30,434 in 2011, proclaims ‘Good
News—The Sea is Coming Back’.
The North Aral Sea Project - Phase 2
Soon after the first phase of the Northern
Aral Sea Project was declared complete in
2008, the president of Kazakhstan stoodon the Kokaral Dam and committed to a
five-year, $250 million project that would
eventually bring the Northern Aral Sea, stillover 20 kilometres distant from Aral’sk, backto the town’s harbour. The World Bank would
again assist with funding, though the major
share of the cost would fall to Kazakhstan,financed by revenues from the nation’s oilfields (Kazakhstan is expected to double its
oil output and become one of the world’s top
ten oil-producing countries by 2020).
The key premise of the second phase of the
project (Map 2), to be actioned between 2010
and 2015, is to further increase the levelof the Northern Aral Sea from its current
42 metres to 46 metres, by:• Constructing a 10.3 kilometre dam andhydro-electric scheme which will isolate
the Gulf of Saryshyganak (on which
Aral’sk stands) from the main body of
the Northern Aral Sea,
• Excavating a 46 km adduction canalfrom the Syr Darya through Tushibaslake, to fill the Gulf of Saryshyganak andraise its water level to 46 m. The red line
in Map 2 shows the course of this canaland the dotted outline indicates the newextent of water in the Gulf.
• With the enlarged Gulf still not bringing
the sea to Aral’sk, a 100 metre wide
canal will be built to span the final
23 kilometres to reconnect the city withthe water, thus restoring its status asa port. This will not be quite the majortask it seems because a natural channel
already exists: it just needs to be
deepened and widened;• Increasing the height of the Kokaral
Dam to between 48 and 50 metres,a move that will eventually raise thesurface of the sea by up to six metresand expand its surface from 5440 km2
to 8000 km2.
• The spillway which discharges excesswater into the Southern Aral Sea will
be relocated from the Kokaral Dam to
the Shevchenko Strait, which leads
south from the Gulf of Shevchenko(the western lobe of the Northern Aral
Sea). Here, an additional dam will be
constructed to contain the expanded
Northern Aral Sea.
It is estimated that this plan will ultimately
more than double the volume of water in the
Northern Aral Sea from 27 km3 to 59 km3.
The plan will bring additional benefits, as
the dry bed of the Gulf Saryshyganak is
considered to be the main source of thefrequent toxic salt, dust and sand storms
that beset the Aral’sk region. Flooding

The Group for Earth Observation

this large area, which includes the mostcritical areas with a high salt content,
should alleviate this problem. Furthermore,
flooding the Gulf with river water and thendischarging its contents through the new
dam into the Northern Aral Sea will improvethe mixing between salt water in the sea andincoming fresh water from the Syr Darya.
At present, fresh water from the Syr Darya
enters the sea very close to the Kokaral Dam(Map 2). As a result, this water does not
mix well with the main body of water in the
Northern Aral Sea: significant quantities are
simply lost through the dam spillways into
the Southern Aral Sea. By diverting this fresh
water to flow through the entire width of theNorthern Aral Sea, from east to west, before
exiting via the Strait of Shevchenko, more
complete mixing will be assured: this will
create a better chemical balance in the sea,
allow fresh-water fish species to breed more
successfully, and reduce salinity from thecurrent 13-16 g/l to between 2.5 and 3.0 g/l.
It was originally hoped that phase‑2 of theAral Sea Project would bring shipping back to
Aral’sk by 2013, but such is the current paceof progress that this now seems unlikely tohappen much before 2018.
Flood Control on the Syr Darya
Another major problem that had to beaddressed in parallel with work in the Aral
Sea Basin was the annual winter floodingof the Syr Darya. This 2112 kilometre-longriver rises in the Tian Shan Mountains of
Kyrgyzstan and eastern Uzbekistan but,by the time it reaches Kazakhstan, it ismeandering along a shallow course througha vast plain filled with sand dunes bordering
the eastern and northern edges of the Kyzyl
Kum Desert. In winter and spring, this region
frequently experienced serious flooding when
the river overflows its banks.
Water levels in the Syr Darya are usually attheir highest in winter, particularly during
January and February. This results whendams higher upstream in Kyrgystan release
their contents to generate much neededhydro-electricity. The maximum flow ratethat the river can sustain without overflowing
is 700 cubic metres per second. When theflow rate exceeds this, the river starts toshatter its crust of ice, creating ice jams
which result in floods. In times of snowmelt
or heavy rainfall in the catchment area, large
regions are susceptible to inundation as theriver simply overflows its banks. Figure 6
is a false colour MODIS image dating fromMarch 2, 2004, where floodwater in the Syr
Darya shows dark blue and black while ice
and cloud are depicted in cyan.
Between February 21-22, 2008, southern
Kazakhstan suffered its worst floods since
1969 when the already increased winter flow
was suddenly augmented following a sudden
increase in temperature accompanied byheavy rain, which caused rapid snowmelt
throughout its catchment area. The Syr
Darya flooded 48 settlements, inundating
2,345 houses and demolishing 259 buildings... continued on page 14

12

www.geo-web.org.uk

June 2012

Satellite Observationsof the Aral Sea
The Aral Sea has been asubject of regular scrutiny byNASA, through its Landsat andTerra satellite programmes.
Recently, in a celebrationof ten years in orbit, NASA
released the set of imagesof the Aral Sea reproduced
opposite. These depict theongoing process of desiccation
throughout the sea and also
the recovery of the North Aral
from 2006 onwards. All theimages cover the basin of theoriginal Aral Sea. The 1973
Landsat image in figure 3
displays exactly the same
region and indicates just how
severe the loss of water has
been in recent decades.
Of course, the process ofdesiccation relates to climate
on a wider scale, exemplified
by the images for the years
2009-2011. Fed primarily by
the Amu Darya, the easternbasin of the South Aral all but
disappeared in 2009, following
four years of drought in its
catchment area which slowed
and eventually curtailed theriver’s flow into the sea. In
2010, the drought broke andwater swelled the eastern basin
once again. But in 2011, lesswater entered the basin, whichfell to its lowest level (apartfrom 2009).
Even if efforts were madeto restore the Southern Aral
Sea, it is unlikely that the it
could recover in the short
term; more than 50% of theflow of the Amu Darya would
have to reach it to bring thesea back to life. This water,
however, is needed to growcrops to feed the populationsof Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan,
Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, andTajikistan. While improvements
in irrigation efficiency could
restore some water to the sea,
this would not be enough for a
full recovery.
The South Aral Sea is equallyunlikely to dry up entirely
though. The sea will always
receive a modicum of waterfrom rain and snowmelt,
irrigation runoff, and groundwater. As demonstrated from2010 to 2011, year-to-year
fluctuations in precipitation also
have a big influence on the
sea’s extent, particularly in theshallow eastern basin.

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 34

NASA’s EOS AM-1 Satellite, Terra, Tracks Ten Years of Change
A NASA Earth Observatory Report
On December 18, 1999, NASA launched its first Earth observing
satellite EOS AM-1, better known as ‘Terra’. This series of images
from Terra’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer(MODIS) documents changes in the Aral basin throughout the past
decade. In 2000, the lake was already just a fraction of its 1960
extent (black outline), and the Northern Aral Sea had separated
from the Southern Aral Sea, the latter now split into eastern andwestern lobes that remained tenuously connected at both ends. By
the decade’s end, the southern connection had been severed after
the shallower eastern sea retreated rapidly. Especially large retreatsin the eastern lobe of the Southern Aral Sea occurred between
2005 and 2009, when drought limited, and finally cut off, the flowof the Amu Darya. Water levels increased in 2010 after the drought
broke but began to dwindle again in 2011.

August 25, 2000

August 15, 2001

August 20, 2002

August 12, 2003

August 16, 2004

August 12, 2005

August 15 2006

August 16, 2007

August 18, 2008

August 16, 2009

August 26 2010

August 15, 2011

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/aral_sea.php
www.geo-web.org.uk

13

GEO Quarterly No 34

The Group for Earth Observation

June 2012and eight schools. Two bridges were destroyed and large
sections of roads washed out. There was only one fatality, but
12,744 people had to be evacuated from their homes, losing
almost all their possessions, including cattle, poultry andfood reserves. The damage was estimated to have cost $125
million. The pink shading in Map 3 illustrates the extent of
the 2008 flooding. Unfortunately, due to persistent cloud
cover, there is no satellite image of this event.
As hundreds of thousands of people live along the flood
plains of the lower Syr Darya, and in view of the enormous
cost of reparations, the Kazakh government realised thatdecisive action was called for. A gigantic new flood-control
reservoir at Koksaray was commissioned to combat theflooding threat, and construction began in June that very
year. With speed very much of the essence, a workforce of two
thousand set about building a 44 kilometre long, 7.7 metrehigh retaining dam designed to hold 460 square kilometres ofwater to a depth of 6.5 metres. Construction of the Koksaray
reservoir was completed on schedule in December 2010,
and the final concreting of the back slope of the dam wascarried out the following January. It was planned to abstract
up to three billion cubic metres of water (that’s three cubic
kilometres) between January and March.

Map 3 - The area inundated by the devastating 2008 floods is shown in pink.

The Koksaray reservoir is a buffering facility and is only
intended to operate for a maximum of two months in eachyear. When the winter flow-rate of the Syr Darya exceeds thecritical 700 m3/s, water will be abstracted into the holding
reservoir to reduce the flow to a safe level. The accumulated
water will then be released gradually, during subsequentmonths, to augment the river’s flow during the dry season
and meet the needs of agriculture, as well as assisting inreviving the Aral Sea.
By early 2011, the reservoir was storing two billion cubic
meters of water and had already proved its worth by
preventing floods in southern of Kazakhstan that year. Oncethe dam is fully commissioned—some time during 2012—it
will have a holding capacity of three billion cubic metres ofwater.
In the past, when the Syr Darya flooded, much of the overflow
spilled into the Kyzyl Kum Desert where it was lost forever,the desiccated terrain simply acting as a giant soakaway.
Now, following improvements to flood embankments along theriver, these losses are being reduced to further improve theflow capacity of the Syr Darya, ultimately making more water
available to replenish Saryshyganak Bay and the lakes in the
Syr Darya delta.
The Southern Aral Sea
As the MODIS images on page 27 clearly show, the Southern
Aral Sea, most of which lies in poorer Uzbekistan, is being
largely abandoned to its fate. Uzbekistan shows no interest in
restoring the flow of the Amu Darya into the sea, preferring tocontinue the river’s exploitation as a source for the irrigationof its cotton fields. Rather, the Uzbeks currently view thedried out sea bed as a resource for the extraction of oil andgas. In August 2006, the Uzbek government announced thatthey had signed a production agreement with an international
consortium of petrochemical companies to explore for oil andgas in the Aral basin. Following initial drillings, a preliminary
estimate suggested natural gas reserves of at least elevenbillion cubic metres.
All is not gloom, however. In October 2011 the UN Economic
Commission for Europe (UNECE) announced an initiative
whereby it aims to reverse environmental degradation in theSouthern Aral basin by working with the governments of
Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to clothe tensof thousands of hectares of the dry bed of the Southern
Aral Sea in forests. This will stabilise the dried out sea floor
and help to reduce the 70 million tonnes of sand, salt and

14

Figure 6 - The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer(MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this false colour
image showing flooding along the Syr Darya on March 2, 2004.

dangerous chemicals lifted from the bed of the Aral Sea into
the atmosphere every year by the wind.
Credits
NASA Earth Observatory Terra MODIS images created by
Jesse Allen, using data obtained from the Land Processes
Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC).
Much of the textual information in this article has beenacquired from contemporary Russian websites, from
Eurasianet.org and Kazakhstan Today.
References and Further Reading
1 Aral Sea - GEOQ 16, page 25 (2007)
2 Aral Sea Update - GEOQ 18, page 32 (2008)
3 Northern Aral Sea Rides Wave of Optimism
GEOQ 24, page 27 (2009)
4 Aral Sea - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea
5 Aral Sea - http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Аральское_море
6 The Aral Sea Crisis
http://www.columbia.edu/~tmt2120/introduction.htm

Erratum
In GEO Quarterly No 33, the resolution of Sich‑2 was incorrectlystated on page 32, paragraph 2, as 8 kilometres per pixel.
The correct figure should have been 8 metres per pixel.

www.geo-web.org.uk

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

www.geo-web.org.uk

GEO Quarterly No 34

15

GEO Quarterly No 34

The Group for Earth Observation

June 2012

A NASA Earth Observatory Report

Mean Arctic Sea Ice during the three months from November 1, 1979 till January 31, 1980.

Image by the NASA Scientific Visualization Studio based on data from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program.

A recent report in the Journal of Climate in
February 2012, authored by NASA scientist
Joey Comiso, has highlighted as neverbefore the dramatic decrease in Arctic
Ocean sea ice over the past 32 years. A
senior scientist employed at NASA Goddard
Space Flight Center, Maryland, he foundthat the oldest and thickest Arctic sea ice
has been disappearing at a faster rate than
the younger, thinner ice at the edges of theice cap. This rapid disappearance of older
ice makes the Arctic Ocean’s ice cap more
vulnerable to further decline.
The images on these pages show sea ice
coverage in 1980 and 2012, as observedby passive microwave sensors on NASA’s
Nimbus-7 satellite and by the Special
Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder(SSMIS) from the Defense Meteorological
Satellite Program (DMSP). Multi-year ice isshown in bright white, while average sea ice
cover is shown in light blue to milky white.

16

The data shows the ice cover for the periodof November 1 through January 31 in theserespective winters.
Types of Sea Ice
There are three basic types of Arctic sea
ice. There is the young seasonal ice which
is formed during the winter: this ice isthin, and typically melts completely again
the following summer. Secondly, there isperennial ice, ice cover that has persisted
beyond at least one summer. Finally, comes
the thickest ice, termed multi-year ice,
which will have survived through two or
more summer melt seasons. All multi-year
ice is of course perennial ice, but not all
perennial ice is multi-year ice.
Quantifying Sea Ice Cover
The rapid disappearance of older ice makes
Arctic sea ice even more vulnerable tofurther decline in the summer. The researchtakes a closer look at how multi-year ice

www.geo-web.org.uk(ice that has survived through at least
two summers) has diminished with eachpassing winter throughout the last three
decades. Multi-year ice extent—which
includes all areas of the Arctic Ocean wheremulti-year ice covers at least 15% of theocean surface—is diminishing at a rate of
15.1% per decade.
But there’s another measurement thatallows researchers to analyse how theice cap evolves: multi-year ice area,
which ignores regions of open water
between regions of ice floes and focusses
exclusively on the areas of the Arctic Ocean
that are completely covered by multi-year
ice. Sea ice area is always smaller thansea ice extent, and it is this that provides
scientists with the information needed toestimate the total volume of ice in the Arctic
Ocean. Comiso found that the area of themulti-year ice is shrinking even faster thanits extent: by -17.2% per decade.

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 34

Mean Arctic Sea Ice during the three months from November 1, 2011 till January 31, 2012

Image by the NASA Scientific Visualization Studio based on data from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program.

Logistics of Ice Formation
The average thickness of the Arctic sea
ice cover is declining because it is rapidly
losing the multi-year ice, its thickest
component. At the same time, the surface
temperature in the Arctic is rising, which
results in a shorter ice-forming season. It
would take a persistent cold spell in orderfor multi-year sea ice and other ice types
to grow thick enough during the winterto survive the subsequent summer melt
season and reverse the trend.
Scientists differentiate multi-year ice fromboth ‘seasonal’ ice, which comes and goeseach year, and ‘perennial’ ice, defined as all
ice that has survived at least one summer.
In other words.
It was found that the decadal decrease in
the extent of the perennial ice was 12.2%
whereas the decline in its area is 13.5%.
These numbers indicate that the thickest
ice, multiyear-ice, is declining faster thanthe perennial ice that surrounds it.
As perennial ice has retreated during thepast three decades, it has opened up
new areas of the Arctic Ocean that could
now become covered by seasonal ice
during winter. A larger volume of younger
ice means that a higher portion of it has
survived through the summer and isavailable to form second-year ice. This isprobably the reason why the perennial ice
cover, which includes second year ice, is
not declining as rapidly as the multiyear ice
cover.
Multi-year sea ice is shrinking rapidly, andhit its record minimum extent in the winterof 2008 when it was reduced to about
55% of its long term average since the late1970s, when satellite measurements of
the ice cap began. Multi-year sea ice thenrecovered slightly in the three following
years, ultimately reaching an extent of 34%
above the 2008 figure, but dipped again in
winter of 2012, to its second lowest value
ever. Some reports credit the 2012 level as
the lowest ever extent [1].
Measuring Ice Thickness
For this study, Comiso created a time seriesof multi-year ice using 32 years of passive
microwave data from NASA’s Nimbus-7
satellite and the US Department of
Defense’s Defense Meteorological Satellite
Program, acquired during the winter months
from 1978 to 2011. This is the most robustand longest satellite dataset of Arctic sea
ice extent data to date.
Young ice, made from recently frozen
ocean water, is saltier than multi-year ice,
which has had more time to drain its salts.
The salt content in first- and second-year
ice endows them with different electricalwww.geo-web.org.uk

properties compared with multi-year ice: inwinter, when the surface of the sea ice iscold and dry, the microwave emissivity ofmulti-year ice is distinctly different from thatof first- and second-year ice. Microwave
radiometers on satellites are able to pick up
these differences, observed as variationsin brightness temperature, for the different
types of ice. The brightness data are thenfed into an algorithm which discriminates
multi-year ice from the other ice types.
Nine Year Cycle
Comiso compared the evolution of theextent and area of multi-year ice overtime, and confirmed that its decline has
accelerated during the last decade, in part
because of the dramatic decreases of 2008
and 2012. He also detected a periodic
nine-year cycle, where sea ice extent
would first grow for a few years, and thenshrink until the cycle started again. This
cycle is reminiscent of one occurring on
the opposite pole, known as the Antarctic
Circumpolar Wave, which has been
related to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation
atmospheric pattern. If the nine-year Arctic
cycle were to be confirmed, it might explain
the slight recovery of the sea ice coverin the three years following its historicalminimum in 2008.
Reference
1 GEOQ 32, page 26 - Arctic Meltdown

17

GEO Quarterly No 34

The Group for Earth Observation

June 2012

Les Hamilton
Around the middle of April, visitors to the GEO website would
have noticed a number of changes taking place. A clean
modern ‘Home Page’ now greets them, thanks to the efforts of
new webmaster Alan Banks.
When GEO was founded, following a meeting of interested
parties in late 2002, Ray Godden took on the role of providing
the fledgling organisation with a ‘window on the world’. At
that time, making GEO’s presence known was paramount,
and Ray was instrumental in setting the wheels in motion.
The original website proved functional and informative,
and with the addition of electronic ordering to the GEO
Shop, developed into an indispensable interface with themembership
But times move on and, with Ray’s retirement as webmaster,
it became clear that GEO needed someone with the skills totake the website forward. Following an appeal for help, Alan
stepped into the frame and has been experimenting withvarious ideas in recent months. The image opposite shows
the new GEO home page. Alan has brought new ideas into
play, and all of us on the Management Team are excitedabout the new, fresh styling.
Many of the pages are still in the ‘old style’, but they will be
progressively converted to mesh in with the ‘new look’.
Our thanks are due to Ray for getting the GEO website up
and running, and to Alan to taking it forward into GEO’s
second decade.

Anders Höök
Early last February, I got a couple of APTimages showing what the meteorologists
here in Sweden call the ‘snow canon’.
In the image opposite, you can see thata wind from the east is blowing over theBaltic Sea, which was ice-free and also
relatively warm (above 0°C). There, the air
takes up moisture, then blows in over thevery cold land, precipitating this moisture
as snow near the coastline. This is the‘snow canon’ [1].
The clouds gathering near the coastline
are easily seen but they don’t reach very
far inland. For instance, at Vallentuna
where I live, some 25 kilometres inland,
we haven’t got much snow, but people
living near the coast have got quite a lot.
The image is from NOAA 19 at 12.19
UT (maximum elevation 36 degrees)on February 4. It was decoded withPatrik Tast’s APTDecoder and the image
processed with David Taylor’s SatSignal 5.
1 This seems to be a similar effect to the‘Lake Effect Snow’ sometimes experienced
around America’s Great Lakes [Ed].

18This NOAA-19 channel-4 image was acquired at 12:19 UT on February 4, 2012www.geo-web.org.uk

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 34

Angus Crawford
My son David, who is far more ‘up’ on
computer components and stuff thanI am, is a real stickler for noise. Whenhe visited recently, he remarked that,
although the Shuttle Cube computerthat I use for receiving EUMETCast
wasn’t too noisy, there were totally
quiet, fanless products out there. He
guided me through a couple of Internet
pages to illustrate what he meant. I
had wanted to change my OS from XP
to Windows 7 for a while, so I took thisas the impetus I needed to upgrade my
system.
I settled for an Asus AT5IONT-I deluxe
1.8 GHz motherboard. This is fanless,has a large finned radiator covering
most of its surface, and uses anexternal power supply. I added 4 GB of
DDR2 133 SO‑DIMM RAM and boxed it
all up in an MS350 Universal Mini-ITX
enclosure. This has lots of ventilation
slots and is quite small, as you can see
in the photograph.
All these components were purchased
online from mini-itx.com, who provided
a competitive price and quick, wellpackaged delivery. I use a solid state
disk (SSD) in the Shuttle so opted fora 90 MB OCZ 1.8” SATA SSD from
Lambda-Tek online. This SSD needs
an additional adapter to connect into
a normal SATA cable and power cable,a fact that only became clear when
I tried to assemble my components.
This adapter was sourced at my local
computer shop but, as it is available
from Lambda-Tek, I recommend
ordering it with the SSD.
The final piece of hardware for my setup was a TechniSat SkyStar USB-HD
receiver, available from Amazon.
Having put all the bits together, I
fired it up, installed Windows 7, andwent through the tedious processof installing all the latest Microsoft
updates. I transferred my EUMETSATEKU key from my Shuttle and, using
David Taylor’s excellent instructions
for installing the required softwareand my copy of EUMETCast Client
Software v 5.5, I was almost there.
http://www.satsignal.eu/wxsat/
Dexatek/index.htm

One snag I had not anticipated wasthat Windows 7 treats the SkyStar
receiver as a network device and needs
to know its IP address. For Windows 7,
go to Control Panel>Network andInternet>Network Connections. Choose

The author’s home built mini EUMETCast computerthe connection that relates to TechniSat.
Select ‘Properties’ from the Status
Dialog, then ‘Internet Protocol Version
4 (TCP/IPv4)’ followed by ‘Properties’
again. This duologue lets you set the
IP Address and the subnet mask: use
the figures David Taylor recommends
in his EUMETCast Troubleshooting
Guide (URL at the foot of this page),or what is already in your recv.ini file,with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0.
Once I finally got this IP Address set
my system sprang into life and started
downloading data.
I decided not to install a RAM disk (asI had on the Shuttle) and, to date, I
have not suffered any segment losses.
I suppose the read/write time of the
SSD is sufficiently fast that a RAM
disk isn’t required. I currently run two
installations each of MSG Data Manager
and MSG Animator (one for RSS) alongwith Metop Manager, DWDSAT HRPT
Viewer and my Davis Weatherlink datalogger software—all at the same time.
A nice feature of the ASUS motherboard
is that you can set it up to re-bootWindows after a power interruption.
I have all the above programs in the‘Startup’ folder so, when Windows
reboots, all my receiving software isrestarted automatically. I run TrimTreeand Kepler Manager (-Auto) once a day
through Task Scheduler to keep things
neat and tidy. I had hoped to be able toinstall the current version of Windows 7that I have on my main computer but
Microsoft is too smart and requires
activation with a new key. I have foundthat an OEM copy of Windows 7 from
Amazon, which is quite a bit cheaper
than the full product, to be sufficient.
I had ordered a small case fan but ithummed, so I unplugged it and havebeen happily running the whole system
without any forced ventilation for about
three weeks now. The unit set on acouple of narrow boards attached to theside of my desk so there is airflow all
around.
All in all, my new set-up cost me about£622, which was rather more than I
intended when I set out (isn’t it always
the way?). But I now have an up-todate set-up running Windows 7 incomplete silence. I have also renewed
my understanding of how the wholething goes together, so I hope thelearning curve will not be quite sosteep when I get the next EUMETCast
upgrade or David Taylor comes up withsome wizard new piece of software.
Happy receiving.

www.geo-web.org.uk
David Taylor’s EUMETCast Troubleshooting Guide - http://www.satsignal.eu/wxsat/atovs/EUMETCast-trouble-shooting-guide.html

19

GEO Quarterly No 34

20

The Group for Earth Observation

www.geo-web.org.uk

June 2012

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 34

John Tellick

Figure 1 - Cloud streets stream across the Beach Sea in this AVHRR image from NOAA 19 on February 1, 2012
Image © EUMETSAT 2012

I’m sure many of you like me will be familiar with—andfascinated by—cloud streets, which show up well insatellite imagery. It’s very common to see then streaming off
Greenland into the North Atlantic. Another good place to look
is from the Ukraine into the Black Sea in winter. Figure 1
shows cloud streets where cold air from Ukraine meets therelatively warm waters of the Black Sea.

the Bay of Biscay. So, I thought it about time I investigated
how cloud streets form and found this: ‘The exact process that
leads to the formation of horizontal convective rolls is not wellunderstood.’ Not a good start.

I was, however, rather surprised to see cloud streets,
unusually, in the English Channel. On February 2, justa few days after winter finally arrived in SE England,
both polar orbiter AVHRR and Meteosat-9 HRV imagery
showed a spectacular display of the phenomenon spreading
southwest along the English Channel. The NOAA‑19 image isreproduced opposite, and the earlier Metop‑A version can beviewed on page 22.
The conditions I always thought responsible for cloudstreets—a cold steady air stream passing from cold land
over warmer sea, were just right. There was settled highpressure driving a cold northeasterly air flow from northern
Europe across the UK, which resulted in cloud streets when
it encountered the warmer waters of the English Channel andFigure 2 - Formation of the ‘rolls’

Source: Daniel Tyndall, University of Utah / Wikimedia Commonswww.geo-web.org.uk

21

GEO Quarterly No 34

Figure 3 - The February 2 Metop-A image showing cloud streets in the English Channel and Bay of Biscay

By the way, the correct term for these clouds is horizontal
convective rolls: they are counter-rotating vortex rolls, so
I’m informed. Now that does sound interesting and, indeed,high resolution satellite imagery does show them under goodconditions to be roll or tube-like in structure, rather thanflat. Figure 3 shows diagrammatically the formation of suchrolls.
Reading further, one finds that these clouds are ‘long rolls ofcounter-rotating air that are oriented approximately parallelto the ground in the planetary boundary layer’ and ‘If theenvironmental air is near saturation, condensation may occur

22

in updrafts produced from the vortex rotation. The sinking
motion produced between alternating pairs of rolls, combinedwith the updrafts, will produce cloud streets. Typical updraft
and downdraft speeds are usually less than 1 m/s. Gliders
often use the updrafts produced by the rolls to gain altitude
while flying.’
Beyond this, the ‘mechanics’ of the process do become rather
complicated so, if you are interested in further explanation,
Wikipedia is a good start.

www.geo-web.org.uk

All images received via EUMETCast processedwith HRPT Reader and GeoSatSignal-7.

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 34

A NASA Earth Observatory Report

Like a comet streaking through the atmosphere, Space Shuttle
Atlantis left the International Space Station for the final time on
July 21, 2011, descending to a smooth landing at NASA’s Kennedy
Space Center in Florida. This astronaut photograph, taken from thevantage point of the ISS, shows the streak of an ionized plasma
plume created during the shuttle’s descent through the atmosphere.
At the time of the image, ISS was positioned northwest of theGalapagos Islands, with Atlantis roughly 2,200 kilometres to
its northeast, off the east coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. The
maximum angle of the shuttle’s descent was roughly 20°, though

it appears much steeper in this photograph because of the oblique
viewing angle from ISS.
In the background of the image, airglow hovers above the limbof the Earth. Airglow occurs when atoms and molecules high inthe atmosphere (above 80 kilometres altitude) release by nightthe excitation energy they absorbed from sunlight (particularly
ultraviolet radiation) during the day. Much of the green glow is
attributable to oxygen molecules.
Astronaut photograph ISS028-E-18218 was provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations
experiment and Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center.

www.geo-web.org.uk

23

GEO Quarterly No 34

The Group for Earth Observation

June 2012

Guy Martin
I was looking to build a barometer as part ofa weather station and tried various sensors
that were easily available. The project was
to interface the pressure sensor with a
PIC chip, the readout being performed by
an LCD display. Analogue sensors proved
difficult to interface and get a consistently
accurate readout due to voltage drift andtemperature variations. They would be great
to detect when an air compressor tank
was full but not for reasonably accurate
atmospheric measurements.
I discovered a digital pressure sensor
MS5534 made by Intersema, a Swisscompany. This looked as though it would
provide a consistently accurate readout.
http://www.meas-spec.com/
product/t_product.aspx?id=5027

This device is an on‑chip pressure sensor
and thermometer. The sensor itself is ofcourse analogue, but the A/D conversion
is performed on‑chip with a high degreeof accuracy. Various coefficients which
describe the parameters of the conversion
are stored in the chip’s memory during
the manufacturing process. There are six
parameters in total, which are read outof the chip, stored in the processor (PIC)and are used as part of the mathematicalformulae applied to the pressure andtemperature readings to obtain accurate
readings. The data is transferred to the PIC
using two signals, one a clock and the othera reversible data line.
There were two slight drawbacks: first that
it was surface‑mount, but luckily with only
six pins; second that I had to buy it from
Switzerland (and my local bank took a lot of
persuading that there was such a thing as a
low cost international transfer). You can now
buy these devices from this company:
http://www.nickbelsondesign.co.uk/
html/ecomerce.htm

The device requires a 3.3 V nominal power
supply and a square‑wave clock feed of
32.768 kHz, and is easily interfaced to acontrolling PIC chip. However, imagine mysurprise when Elektor Magazine fell throughthe letter box and contained an article
about a weather data logger that appeared
to use just this device. On examination, it
only appeared identical and was an HP03S
made by a Chinese company HopeRF.
Elektor had these for sale in their online
shop, and they were a lot cheaper than theIntersema sensor.
It was different in that there were elevencoefficients instead of six and the device
used the I2C protocol (a two wire system forthe transfer of data between devices whichis in common use in many domestic devices
such as televisions, for controlling various
components such as tuners). The HopeRF
website has some useful information on
using the sensor.
http://www.hoperf.com/sensor/
barometer_sensor/HP03S.htm

I therefore decided to make a stand-alone
barometer using one of these HP03S
sensors, a PIC chip and a 20x4 LCD display(a display of 20 characters and 4 lines
which can be purchased cheaply on eBay)
As the sensor requires a 3.3 V supply, I
decided to run the PIC on 3.3 V as well,for simplicity. But the LCD requires 5 V, sopull up resistors were used between the
PIC and the LCD. The PIC is quite happy
about this arrangement. I used an 18F2525,
mainly because I had some left over from aprevious commission.
The barometer was designed to run
from a 9 V DC plug top adaptor. A 5 V
regulator supplied the LCD and a 3.3 V
regulator supplied the PIC and sensor. It issometimes useful to connect the input via abridge rectifier; it then doesn’t matter about
the polarity of the supply or even if it is
AC—it all comes good.
The sensor requires a 32.767 kHz squarewave clock signal, provided by a watch
crystal, using two gates from a 4011 quad
NAND gate configured as an oscillator. A
switch was also included in the circuit inorder to enter the height of the station, sothat sea level pressure could be calculated.
The switch needed to be debounced, which
was achieved by means of two spare gates.
The circuit is shown opposite.
Circuit Operation
On switch-on, a brief copyright message
appears followed by a read-out of local
atmospheric pressure (QFE) and a request
to enter your height above sea level so thatsea level pressure can be calculated (QNH).
Obviously, the device will measureatmospheric pressure at the height where
you are situated, which will be less than
the atmospheric pressure at sea level. In
aeronautical terms this is known as QFE,
or aerodrome pressure. QNH is sea levelpressure for a certain region. Pressure
altimeters require a base pressure to
be entered in order to calculate height;
for example, if you land at an airport
200 metres above sea level, you need toenter the pressure corresponding to anheight of 200 metres to obtain accurate
altimeter readings above that airport.

Back to the display: Enter height x 1000 feetis displayed, with an initial reading of zero.
Pressing the switch will increment the height
up to nine when it will roll over to zeroagain. If there are no key presses for two
seconds, height x 100 is requested, and soon until the system knows your height. It is
assumed that the height is greater or equal
to zero (sea level) and less than 9999. It will
now display both pressures and await trend
data. The current pressure is stored and iscompared in three hours time with the new
current pressure to get the trend (rising
quickly, falling slowly etc).
I spent a long time poring over how toconvert pressure at height (Pht) to sea levelpressure (SLP). Some hideous equations
were tried, some of which gave ridiculous
results, no doubt due to programming
errors. I eventually discovered the following
simple formula with better than 2% accuracy
between sea level and 2000 feet:

SLP = Pht + (height in feet)/30
The change of pressure over three hours
can also be displayed. Key presses will
toggle between current pressure and stored
pressure. Below is a picture of the unit withsome test data.

With different software, this unit could
become an altimeter. It can also display
temperature but, since it was intended to be
an indoor unit, there are probably alreadythermometers in other pieces of domestic
equipment.
Comparison with my commercial weather
station indicates an accuracy of around
0.6 mb (which equates to 18 feet), which
seems reasonable as the unit is mounted
on the roof of a bungalow. It is usually
about 1 mB different from the Met Officesite. I guess, as meteorologists (using theterm loosely as far as I am concerned),
we are more interested in change and rateof change of pressure rather than actualpressure. The sensor will give a readout
to two decimal places with an accuracy of± 1.5 hPa (1 hPa = 1 mb).
This article is intended to describe the use
to which a simple pressure sensor may be
put and my implementation of a circuit todo just that. If there is any interest among
readers for building one, I can make the
PIC hexcode available. The parts arereadily available, the sensor from Elektor,
Continued on page 37

24

www.geo-web.org.uk

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

www.geo-web.org.uk

GEO Quarterly No 34

25

GEO Quarterly No 34

The Group for Earth Observation

June 2012

Esko Petäjä
We were having a winter holiday trip in Grand Canaria during late
February 2012. While planning the trip, I noticed that there is alarge and important satellite receiving centre there, which plays
an important role in reception of the data from MSG-2, NOAA
HRPT,Metop-A and Envisat that we receive through EUMETCast or
Envisat DDS. This article will describe the station background andhistory, and also shows some pictures of antennas that I was able
to take while hill climbing near the station.
Station Information
Maspalomas station is located in the southern part of Gran
Canaria,, in the Canary Islands, 205 metres above sea level at
Montaña Blanca (27°45’N, 15°38’W). The station, which is operated
by Instituto Nacional de Tecnica Aerospacial (INTA), is locatedon a hill which guarantees good visibility. Towards the south,
the horizon is sea level; towards north it is about five degrees.
Weather conditions here are very good, with just 102 mm average
rainfall over the past six years. Hail and thunderstorms are very
uncommon, and snow and ice never occur. In recent years, thetemperature has stayed between 10.7°C and 39.5°C.

by John Glenn—on February 20, 1962, as well as subsequent
Mercury manned space flights during 1962–63. The Maspalomas
station was part of the NASA Mercury network, comprising 14
stations distributed around the world. Maspalomas also monitored
subsequent US space missions such as Gemini, Apollo, ApolloSoyuz and Skylab till 1975.
INTA was involved in operating the station from the beginning,
initially with an almost token staff, which has gradually, grown toover 60. In more recent times, Maspalomas has been involved withmissions for ESA, SARSAT (emergency beacons), EUMETSAT,NASDA and JAXA (Japanese Space Agency) as well as local
Spanish civil and military programmes.

Figure 3 - Maspalomas Control Centre in 1960

MSG Operations
The Primary Ground Station for the Meteosat Second Generation(MSG) satellites is in Usingen, Germany, about 30 kilometres northof Frankfurt. Some of us visited this station during the GEO visits.
The separate Back-up and Ranging Ground Station (BRGS) is
located in Maspalomas. This location is sufficiently separated from
Usingen to allow accurate ranging measurements to be made to
determine the precise location and orbit of the MSG satellites.
Maspalomas station is also dedicated to provide telecommanding
and telemetry support to the ground network for the operations of
the satellites in case of a complete system failure at Usingen.

Figure 1 - Welcome sign outside INTA

Figure 4
The MSG Reception Antenna (at right)

Figure 2 - Landsat Image of Gran Canaria showing location of Maspalomas
Image: NASA

Station History
The station at Maspalomas was originally built for the NASA
Mercury programme in 1960, the choice of location being
determined by the fact that Cape Canaveral and Maspalomas areat the same latitude, with an ocean between them. The station
was first used to support the Mercury-Atlas-4 unmanned flight,
launched on September 13, 1961, and which made one orbit of the
Earth. And of course, it was involved in the first manned flight—

26

ESA/ESRIN Operations
Some GEO readers are receiving Envisat images through theEnvi-Ham project. Envisat has three command and control centres:
Darmstadt (ESOC), Kiruna-Salmijärvi (ESA) and Svalbard. One ofthe payload receiving stations is located in Maspalomas, from wherehigh quality MER-FRS data is forwarded to Frascati in Italy (ESRIN)
and Kiruna-Salmijärvi in Sweden (SSC), which then takes care of theuplink of data to the Eutelsat W2 satellite for transmission by DDS
to Envisat users. Following picture shows Envisat data management
system.
The station has a 10 metre antenna for receiving in the following
frequency bands:
L - 1.650-1.750 MHz
40 dB
S - 2.200-2.300 MHz 40 dB
X - 8.025-8.400 MHz 55 dB

www.geo-web.org.uk

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 34

Figure 5 - The Maspalomas Receiving Station

The antenna can be moved with amaximum elevation rate of 7º per secondand an azimuth rate of 12º per second.
Figure 5 shows the reception antennas
and ground station located on a hill near
the sea. Figure 6 shows a close-up viewof the antenna used for Envisat. Figure 7
illustrates all the4 components of theEnvisat data management system.

To ensure the efficient and timely delivery of data the received
HRPT stream is handled in small segments. The EUMETSAT data
centre decides which data will be used so that end users obtain acontinuous set of ‘best quality’ segments for the regional pass.

Figure 6
The 10 m Envisat Antenna

Figure 9 - Our Luxury Cave Holiday Home in Gran Canaria

Cave Holidays
Gran Canaria is a very interesting place for travelling and ourholiday accommodation was in an ancient cave in the hillside(figure 9). We also visited some luxury caves, fitted out with all
the conveniences of modern life, including a top-of-the range TV
system.
Green Energy

Figure 7 - Envisat Receiving Stations

EUMETSAT-EARS Mission
Maspalomas has also been
receiving data from the NOAA
and Metop polar orbiting
satellites since July 2005 using
the antenna shown in figure 8.
The EARS-AVHRR service
collects AVHRR instrument
data from the both NOAA andMetop via a network of HRPT
stations and retransmits it via
Figure 8
EUMETCast.
The Reception Antenna for EARS-AVHRR

Gran Canaria harnesses solar and wind energy like no-where
else, and gains 20% of all its energy requirements from renewablesources. Wind turbines can be seen everywhere, and almost every
roof houses a warm water solar heating unit (figure 10). These
heating units were invented by an Australian company in 1953, andnow they are world leaders in this area. A very interesting and goodinvention, helping to save our planet.

Figure 10 - One of the ubiquitous solar roof-mounted water heating units

www.geo-web.org.uk

27

GEO Quarterly No 34

The Group for Earth Observation

June 2012

John Tellick
Have you ever had one of those moments when you made arash decision and a day later wondered: “What am I doing
here?” Very early in my BBC career, in March 1969, whilst
still only an assistant recordist with the Film Unit, I passed
the allocation office on my way home one afternoon. They
were desperately trying to find a recordist to cover rioting andpolitical unrest in East Pakistan. “I’ll go” said I glibly. I wasyoung and ‘raring to see the world’ in those days.
Well, 24 hours later, I was on a plane with a cameraman andMichael Charlton (Panorama) heading for Frankfurt. Therewe would board a Lufthansa Boeing 707 to Karachi, my arm
aching after being pumped full of vaccinations, heading fora ‘civil war zone.’ The next day we flew to Dacca, where I’mpleased to say a rather nice 4‑star Intercontinental Hotelawaited us.
This was the first of many trips to third-world countries
during my BBC career. It was to be exciting and ‘full of theunknown’ in more ways than one. In fact, I found all mymany further trips to third-world countries exciting, though
not all offered a 4‑star hotel. Far from it on several trips—
once, in Zimbabwe I experienced five days in a prison cell.
Martial Law had been declared before we arrived in Dacca, so
things had quietened down. This meant, although covering
the political situation, we had to find ‘something else’ to film.
We went off up country to see life in the hinterland, flying
to Chittagong, a port on the Bay of Bengal, to film the Jute
industry and taking a train to Sylhet in the northeast of thecountry, where we stayed to film on a tea plantation up in thefoothills, which was just beautiful.
East Pakistan was such a fascinating, bustling country,
full of new sights, sounds, colours and experiences. I reallyenjoyed the trip, though having an ‘upset stomach’ on theovernight train from Sylhet back to Dacca, followed by twodays ill in bed, made one rather grateful for a bit of 4‑star
comfort. But I digress ...
The Ganges enters the Indian Ocean through the world’s
largest river delta, and one of the most geographicallyturbulent areas in the world—the country now being
Bangladesh and the capital Dhaka. The Delta extends over
105,000 square kilometres to cover the entire southern partof Bangladesh and continues into the Indian state of West
Bengal. It is extremely vulnerable to climate change which,
it is predicted, will increase precipitation and cause more
frequent and stronger cyclones and floods. Flooding in thedelta can also occur from heavy runoff from the melting
snows of the Himalayas.
A number of large rivers flow through the Ganges Delta,
including the Padma (main distributary of the Ganges) andthe Jamuna (main distributary of the Brahmaputra), whichmerge and then join the Meghna before flowing through thedelta into the Bay of Bengal. Most of the delta is composedof alluvial soils made from small sediment particles that
finally settle as river currents slow down in the estuary. Notethe sediment outflow into the Bay of Bengal in the satellite
images opposite.
These rivers are all nutrient-rich, making the low-lying delta
one of the world’s most fertile regions. The major crops grown
here are rice, jute and tea. Fishing is also an important

28

activity in the delta region, with fish being a major source offood for many of the people who live there.
Three terrestrial ecoregions cover the delta. The Lower
Gangetic plain’s moist deciduous forests ecoregion covers
most of the delta, although the forests have mostly beencleared for agriculture and only small enclaves remain.
Thick stands of tall grass, known as canebrakes, grow inwetter areas. The Sundarbans freshwater swamp forest
ecoregion lies closer to the Bay of Bengal; this ecoregion isflooded with slightly brackish water during the dry season,and fresh water during the monsoon season. These forests,
too, have been almost completely converted to intensive
agriculture, with only 130 km2 of the ecoregion’s 14,600 km2
currently protected. Where the delta meets the Bay of Bengal,
Sundarbans mangroves form the world’s largest mangrove
ecoregion, covering an area of 20,400 km2 in a chain of
54 islands. They derive their name from the predominantmangrove species, Heritiera fomes, which are known locallyas sundri or sundari.
Animals in the delta include the Indian Python, Clouded
Leopard, Indian Elephant, as well as crocodiles which livein the Sundarbans. Also living in the Sundarbans is theendangered Bengal Tiger—of which there were estimated (in2010) to be only 440 left in the whole of Bangladesh.
Two species of dolphin can be found in the delta: theIrrawaddy Dolphin and the Ganges River Dolphin. The
Irrawaddy Dolphin is an oceanic dolphin that enters thedelta from the Bay of Bengal. The Ganges River Dolphin isa true river dolphin, but is extremely rare and considered
endangered.
The Images
The images opposite, from a Metop-A descending pass on
January 24, 2012, show not only cloud-free detail of theGanges Delta, but demonstrate examples of how groundfeatures, vegetation and crops can be highlighted using the
5‑channel AVHRR data, either individually or in combination,
thanks to the processing facilities of David Taylor’s HRPT
Reader. It’s interesting to see how different features arehighlighted by different channel combinations.
Both NOAA-18 and Metop‑A polar orbiters carry the
6‑channel AVHRR/3 radiometer—though only 5 channels aretransmitted simultaneously. Channel‑3 has two switchable
spectral range settings: 3A at 1.58-1.64 µm and 3B at
3.55‑3.93 µm.
NOAA-18 transmits channel 3B all the time for forest fire
detection: hot spots show up well using this channel, as
most users will have observed. Metop‑A, however, switches
between channels‑3A and ‑3B on both descending andascending passes as the satellite crosses the terminator.
Channel‑3A is transmitted by Metop during daylight, and has
the ability to readily distinguish between areas of snow andcloud owing to the low reflectance of snow at 1.6 micrometres(µm). When used in an RGB combination this gives rise to thewell-know cyan colouring of snow. Channel‑3A also provides
the necessary information for providing ‘true colour’ RGB
images.
It’s well worth trying various combinations of channels 1–5 in
the RGB boxes of HRPT Reader for both NOAA-18 and Metop.

www.geo-web.org.uk

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

Figure 1 - Bangladesh/NE India and the Ganges Delta as
portrayed by HRPT Reader’s false colour tab.

GEO Quarterly No 34

Figure 2 - Bangladesh/NE India using HRPT Reader’s vegetation tab.
Image © EUMETSAT 2012

Image © EUMETSAT 2012

Figure 3 - Bangladesh/NE India using HRPT Reader’s RGB 234 tabshows delta sediment flowing into Bay of Bengal
Image © EUMETSAT 2012

Figure 4 - Bangladesh/India wider view using HRPT Reader’s
RGB 324 tab. Note how mountain snow is clearly shownin cyan, and the very distinct area in the centre of the delta.
Image © EUMETSAT 2012

Figure 5 - The AVHRR channel‑1 clearly shows river
sediment flowing into the Bay of Bengal.
Image © EUMETSAT 2012

Figure 6 - Lush vegetation and crops on a Sundarban farm.
Photo: Arne Hückelheim/Wikimedia

www.geo-web.org.uk

29

GEO Quarterly No 34

30

The Group for Earth Observation

www.geo-web.org.uk

June 2012

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 34

Les Hamilton

We reported last issue how, in the final week of January, much ofEurope suddenly found itself in the grip of some of the harshest
winter weather for decades. But this proved to be but the tip of
the iceberg as the first two weeks in February saw temperatures
tumbling to close on -40°C. This major freeze-up brought trafficchaos to the continent, blocking roads, shutting down airports,
freezing rivers and canals, and trapping thousands in remotemountain villages in the Balkans. Heavy snow was recorded fromthe UK to Italy, the Balkans, Turkey and Russia: tens of thousandsof villagers became prisoners in their own homes as snow drifts
quickly rose above their rooftops.
This was no mere cold snap however, as weeks of extreme
weather meant tragedy throughout Europe: more than 600
deaths, half of them in Ukraine, could be attributed directly tothe conditions. From late January until mid-February the entire
continent was in deep-freeze, experiencing some of the heaviest
blizzards in living memory. Tens of thousands became trappedin their villages by walls of snow and impassable roads while theauthorities struggled to airlift food to them.
But it was not all doom and gloom: there were also opportunities
for fun in the snow. Children in Rome and along Croatia’s Adriatic
coast made the most of the rare snow. In Sarajevo citizens
organised their own winter Olympic games, skiing down the mainstreets and leaping from upper floor windows into deep drifts ofsnow. Some cruised the streets, towed behind cars on skis. And in
the Netherlands, canals froze creating a mecca for skaters.
The last time significant snow fell in Rome was 1986, so it comesas little surprise that the authorities were completely unprepared as
the capital ground to a halt. Cars and buses struggled to climb icy
hills while the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, Forum and other attractions
were closed to visitors for fear they might injure themselves byslipping on the ice. All schools in the city were closed. In the
country as a whole, temperatures fell to -25°C at Lake Garda in
the north, while even the normally balmy south of Italy plummeted
to -10°C. Milan recorded a low of ‑12°C, prompting the authorities
to open part of the city’s subway system as a refuge for some
100 homeless people. There were reports of wolves scavenging
among the deserted streets of the village of Trasacco, 80 kilometres
east of Rome. And the famous canals of Venice started freezing
over, preventing gondoliers from plying their trade on the city’s
picturesque waterways.
With Italy almost entirely blanketed in snow, hundreds of barns
collapsed under the unaccustomed weight, and thousands of farmanimals perished as a result. Near the southern town of Candela,in Puglia, the army had to be deployed to help hundreds of people
who became stranded on a blocked road overnight. In some areasin the foothills of the Alps, rescuers had to pluck people from theirhomes, as drifting snow reached three metres in depth.
Bucharest, where the mercury failed to climb above zero between
January 24 and February 12, recorded its lowest temperature,‑24°C, on two consecutive February mornings. The averagehigh for this time of year is just 3°C. Snow was lying 30 cm deepin the city and had piled up even higher to the west, in Bosnia
and Herzegovina where, in the capital Sarajevo, over a metre
had accumulated. Last winter, Sarajevo received a mere two
centimetres of snow. In the east of Romania, 23,000 people wereisolated in over 200 small communities after more than a week ofheavy snow blocked roads and wreaked havoc on the rail network.
Residents were worried that their houses might collapse under
the heavy snow as rescuers attempted to bring them food, water,
medicine and wood. A five-month-old girl with severe pneumonia
had to be taken to a hospital by sled after authorities struggled forsix hours to reach her.
In Bulgaria, rescue teams fought to evacuate inhabitants after
heavy rain and melting snow caused the dam on the Ivanovo
reservoir to collapse, releasing a 2.5-metre flood of water which
engulfed 700 homes in the village of Bisser, near the Greek border.
There were only five minutes warning of the onrushing deluge,
and it was miracle that only five of the villagers lost their lives inthe terror. Downstream, four others perished when their cars were
swept away by the floodwaters. Officials warned that two other evenlarger dams, at Ivaylovgrad and Studena, were on the brink ofoverflowing, and urged people to be ready for evacuation.
The Balkan Peninsula suffered badly from a series of potent snow
storms, the direct result of the jet stream dipping much farther
south than normal. This allowed storms to pick up moisture over thewaters of the Mediterranean and Aegean seas before dumping it on
the already frozen landscape of the peninsula. As a consequence,
the Serbian government declared an emergency situation, withat least 70,000 people cut off by the heavy snow: these included
shutting down all schools for a week to save power and keep
the children safe. The youngsters in the capital, Belgrade, madethe most of the situation, making for the city’s parks for sledding
and building snowmen. The river Danube, one of Europe’s maintransport arteries, was barely navigable around Belgrade and river
traffic was virtually at a standstill along a 170 km stretch. In aneffort to save power for domestic heating, some 2,000 industrial
businesses were closed to limit the strain on hydro-power plants,
which were struggling because of the build-up of ice.
In the Netherlands, Europe’s deep freeze came close to making
the nation’s Elfstedentocht (Eleven Cities Tour) ice skating
marathon a reality for the first time since 1997. This race, held
along a 200 kilometer network of canals connecting eleven towns
and cities in Friesland, is a major attraction, and draws thousandsof participants and more than a million spectators. Alas, with thecourse just a few days of being considered fit for the event, thethaw set in. But many stretches along the canal network were safe
for skating, and thousands of skating enthusiasts took to the ice.
You can see some of Rob Alblas’ photographs overleaf.
The first ten days of February were the coldest experienced in the
Netherlands for 95 years. The average temperature recorded at
De Bilt Meteorological Centre during this period was just -7.0°C.
Since records were first kept in 1901, only once, in 1917, has there
been a colder start to February (when the average temperature was-7.2°C). In Amsterdam, the canals were frozen over, closing themto commercial shipping, and providing citizens with more skating
opportunities. In The Hague it was reported that a man had tried tosmuggle marijuana into the prison. Taking advantage of the snowy
weather, he concealed a package of the drug in a snowball, which
he tossed over the wall of the prison. Unfortunately, the snowballcrumbled, revealing its contents, and the man was arrested.
Meteorologists in Belgium stated that the country had recorded
its longest cold snap in 70 years, with temperatures in the suburbs
around Brussels remaining below zero for 13 consecutive days.

www.geo-web.org.uk

31

GEO Quarterly No 34

The Group for Earth Observation

Figure 1 - A Metop‑A image from 10:31 UT on February 7, 2012, processedusing David Taylor’s HRPT reader with the NOAA snow filter.
Image © EUMETSAT 2012 - provided by James Brown

June 2012

Figure 2 - An Aqua MODIS image from February 11, 2012, processed using
David Taylor’s L1 MODIS Viewer using the RGB521 filter.
Image © EUMETSAT 2012 - provided by James Brown

Figure 3 - This Envisat MERIS image was acquired by Mike Stevens on February 2, 2012, and chows snowfall over Dartmoor and Exmoor and south Wales.
Image © EUMETSAT 201232

www.geo-web.org.uk

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 34

Robert Moore sent us this photo of his daughter and her two sons having
supper in an igloo they built in their West Sussex garden. They said that thequickly igloo warmed up inside once they were all in.
Photo © Sven Howarth-Moore

Figure 4 - David Taylor acquired this NOAA‑19 image showing snow covering
SE England from the EUMETCast EARS data on February 11, 2012.
Image © EUMETSAT 2012

A picture like a painting. Halfway between the cities Stavoren and Hindelopen
Photo: Rob Alblas

Figure 5 - Ice piles up near Urk, on the shore of IJsselmeet in Netherlands
Photo: Rob Alblas

www.geo-web.org.uk

Skaters enjoying the ice on the canals in Hindelopen
Photo: Rob Alblas

33

GEO Quarterly No 34

The Group for Earth Observation

June 2012

In Bosnia, hundreds of villages found themselves marooned
behind snowed-in roads and avalanches as authorities resorted tohelicopters to evacuate the sick and deliver food. In the village of
Zijemlja, 120 people were without electricity or telephone contact forthree full days. In Sarajevo, thousands trudged to work with only
occasional buses braving the deep snow. Volunteers turned out toclear the tram lines. Householders were told to keep their refuse off
the streets because it would be days before the authorities were ina position to collect it. In a sign of the extreme weather conditions,the city hospital in Split, Croatia, used up two years’ supply ofplaster in one week in treating the unusually high number of bone
fractures caused by slips on snowy and icy streets. In Poland,
20 people died in one particularly cold 24-hour spell of freezing
weather, bringing the total death toll this year to over 100. The
majority of these victims either froze to death or were suffocated byfumes from defective heaters.

The ‘highway’ to Dokkum, the most northern city in Friesland.
Photo: Rob Alblas

In European Russia, the temperature remained abnormallywarm up till January 19, 2012, then turned abruptly. The average
February temperature for Moscow is around –9°C, but a week into
the month it was down to -20° with predictions that it could drop
much farther, perhaps as low as -35°. By way of contrast, the northof Siberia was, at the same time, enjoying temperatures 14° above
average. This was the coldest winter Russia had endured since thatof 2005-2006.
Following a massive pile-up in a blizzard, about 100 damaged cars
blocked the Czech Republic‘s major road artery between Prague
and the eastern part of the country and Slovakia.
Skaters on a frozen lake near Koudum, Friesland, in the north of theNetherlands. Tracks were prepared for the 200 km 11-city skating tour,
but it was cancelled (ice not thick enough as 15 cm was needed over thefull 200 km). But this did make it possible to do the tour as an individual.
Photo: Rob Alblas

In Montenegro, the government imposed a state of emergency
after snow had blocked roads and railways across most of thecountry. More than 50 people were stranded on a train in the northof the country for more than two days before they could be freed
by emergency rescue crews. In the mountain town of Zabljak, snow
was over two metres deep. In many locations, the heaviest snowfor 63 years sealed off hundreds of villages, trapping thousands ofresidents in their homes. In the capital, Podgorica, the authorities
banned all private traffic as the city was brought to a standstill.
Snow approached a metre in depth, a 50-year record, and closed
the city’s airport. An avalanche halted rail services to Serbia.
Officials claimed that this was the most snow they’ve seen inMontenegro since 1949.
One of Europe’s busiest waterways, the 2,860-kilometre River
Danube, which flows through nine countries and is vital fortransport, power, irrigation, industry and fishing, was wholly or
partially blocked from Austria to its mouth on the Black Sea by thick
ice, the worst for quarter of a century. Shipping was brought to a
standstill for several weeks with scores of vessels confined to port.
There were ice floes as much as half a metre thick at Belgrade.
The part of the Danube that flows through Bulgaria froze over for
the first time in 27 years and, for the first time in decades, parts of
the Black Sea froze near its shores, while the Kerch Strait linking itwith the Sea of Azov was closed to navigation after more than 120
ships became trapped in it by ice. Bulgarian authorities banned allnavigation on the river, reporting that the Danube was up to 90%
ice-covered, with well over 200 ships stranded in six river ports andthe river channel itself. Even farther west, in Austria, navigation
was impossible as the river developed a layer of ice that was up to
12 centimetres thick in places.

34

The Thaw
The rapid thaw that arrived on February 20 brought chaos to theRiver Danube in the Serbian capital Belgrade, when massive
ice floes careened into boats and bridges, causing widespread
damage. The thick ice which had covered the waterways during
the freeze began to break up as temperatures rose: boats crashedinto each other and one boat owner claimed that the ice had moved
so fast that there had been nothing they could do to save them. In
the Kapetanija marina in the Serbian capital, only a small numberof the hundred or so boats moored there escaped major damage.
Debris was scattered among the breaking ice for hundreds ofmetres along the river, and several floating restaurants, barges
and boats were beached on the banks of the Danube after the ice
snapped their anchor lines.
The Cause?
A report from NASA Science News explained what happened (seeURL at the foot of this page). A tight polar vortex that had bottled
up the cold arctic air in the early part of the of winter suddenly
weakened, allowing cold air to sweep out of Siberia into Europe.
Such severe winters have occurred in the past: in winter 1683/84,
the River Thames in England remained frozen with a thick layerof ice for nearly two months; in winter 1812, Napoleon’s Grande
Armee was defeated by the extreme cold in Western Russia.
The polar vortex is set up by the Arctic Oscillation [1] and traps
a circulation of frigid air around the North Pole. Eventually, theOscillation turned negative, allowing the cold air to escapes towards
lower latitudes, resulting in the killing extremes noted above.
However, breakdown of the vortex cannot completely accountfor the severity of the winter in Europe, and some climatologists
attribute the unusual cold to Global Warming. The contention isthat, since sea ice is being melted by warmer temperatures in the
Arctic, more moisture is available for the atmosphere to pick up anddrop as snow. As a result, Siberian snow cover increased, which inturn produced a cooling effect that spread throughout Europe.
Reference
1 Arctic Oscillation: GEOQ 29, page 6.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/16feb_deepfreeze/
www.geo-web.org.uk

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 34

MaSat-1

Image: ESA

Les Hamilton
History was created on February 13, 2012 when Hungary became
the 47th spacefaring nation, following the successful launch of theirfirst satellite, MaSat-1. Along with seven other student built amateur
radio satellites, Masat-1 was just one of a total payload of eightcubesats launched from Kourou spaceport by ESA’s new 30 metretall, 130 tonne Vega launch vehicle.
Cubesats
Cubesats are picosatellites—tiny satellites in the form of cubes
measuring just ten centimetres on each side—with a maximum
mass of one kilogram, intended for operation from university orradio amateur ground stations. They offer hands-on experience
to aerospace engineering students in the design, development,
testing and operation of a real spacecraft system and its groundsegment. The cubesats launched in February were built byEuropean universities as part of the ESA Education programme.
They encompass a range of designs, miniaturised technologies
and sensors, and are deployed into highly inclined 1441 x 310 km
orbits. They have nominal working lifetimes of up to four years.
MaSat-1
The MaSat project originated in September 2007, when a group ofundergraduate and PhD students at BME (the Budapest Technicaland Economics University) decided to design and build a small
satellite. The initiative was encouraged by two departments ofBME—the Department of Electron Devices and the Department of
Broadband Infocommunications and Electromagnetic Theory—incooperation with the Hungarian Space Office and various domestic
companies. Since launch, the satellite has operated flawlessly,
steadily transmitting data to the primary ground control station at
the University, as well as to the secondary ground control station
at Érd (also in Hungary). In addition to these domestic control
stations, more than 120 radio amateurs have been receiving thesatellite from around the world, contributing to the success of themission.

MaSat-1 imaged SW Australia at 03:07 UT on March 12, 2012

MaSat-1 imaged SE Australia at 05:52 UT on March 12, 2012
MaSat’s first image, the east coast of southern Africa, on March 8, 2012.

Although kept a secret prior to its launch, it was later revealed that
MaSat-1 carries a small on-board camera with a 640 x 480 pixels
sensor, yet a mass as small as that of a 2-euro coin. The ground
resolution in its images varies between 1 and 10 kilometres per
pixel, depending on the craft’s orbital position. At present, the spacestabiliser and passive operating system of Masat-1 only allow
the satellite to acquire images of Earth’s southern hemisphere.
Work on the satellite’s situation stabiliser is ongoing, and if active
stabilisation becomes part of the daily routine, Masat-1 should be
able to provide images of the northern hemisphere as well.

Images are stored in the camera and later transmitted to Earthwhen within range of a receiving station. As a pass of the satellite
lasts a mere ten minutes, each picture has to be divided into
several downloadable segments. MaSat’s transmitting antenna
is simply a 16-cm length of steel measuring tape. Of course, thepicture quality cannot compete with the multi-billion dollar US
weather satellite images, but does illustrate what is possible from asmall satellite on a limited budget.
Reference
1 AMSAT -http://www.uk.amsat.org/5781
2 MaSat Home - http://cubesat.bme.hu/en/www.geo-web.org.uk

35

GEO Quarterly No 34

The Group for Earth Observation

June 2012

NASA Earth Observatory

Shiveluch, in Russia’s Kamchatka
peninsula, is one of the most active
volcanoes on Earth and, during the first
three weeks of April 2012, periodic brief
bursts of volcanic activity left radial streaksof ash on the surrounding snow. Between
April 4 and April 22, when this Aqua MODIS
image was acquired, little or no new snow
fell on the region, with the result that fallen
ash remained visible throughout this period.

36

Varying wind directions at the time of each
eruption determined where the erupting
ash would be deposited and produced the‘cartwheel’ pattern seen here. Additionally,
the stronger or lengthier the eruption, thelonger its resulting ash streak.
The natural-colour satellite image above
was collected by the Moderate Resolution
Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS ) on
www.geo-web.org.uk

the NASA’s Aqua satellite. The Kamchatka
Volcanic Emergency Response Team
reported ash plumes that extended as far
as 120 kilometres from Shiveluch on April
17 and 18. One of these eruptions wasmost likely the source of the conspicuous
streak that stretches to the northeast.
NASA images by Jeff Schmaltz,
LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid ResponseJune 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

Hello Les,GEOQ 33 happily arrived a few days ago and, as always, it is very
interesting reading. I noticed that you are the author of a lot of thearticles. Especially the article ‘Sahara Revealed’ pleased me, as did
the article you wrote quite a while ago on the Aral Sea (GEOQ 16),
which I have read several times. But also the article by Robert Morewas really interesting. If I should wish something more in GEOQ 34,
it would be more articles on meteorology.

GEO Quarterly No 34

continued from page 24

LCD from eBay and all small parts from places like Cricklewood
Electronics, Farnell and Rapid with a minimum order charge. It iseasily built on Verboard, with the exception of the surface mountsensor. I make my own PCBs so mounting it was not a problem but
the pin spacing is 0.05 inch, so it won’t fit directly into Veroboard
but could have wires soldered to it. Below is a picture of my finishedunit (disassembled).
Guy Martin will be happy to answer readers’ queries by email
gmartin@electroweb.co.uk

A NOAA 19 APT image of the Barentsz Sea at 09:53 UT on March 18, 2012.

I received this APT image, decoded and processed with Patrik
Tast’s APT Decoder, covering the Barentsz Sea. There are cloudstreaks, and a weak cloud ridge can be seen near the Kola
Peninsula. It would be nice to hear something about this fromsomeone who knows more about meteorology than I do.

Guy Martin’s home-brew electronic barometerBest regards
Anders Höök, Sweden.
Hello Francis ...
Thank you for the latest copy of the GEO Quarterly that I received
this morning, along with your polite reminder that I had not renewed
my GEO subscription. The truth is that I made a positive decision
not to renew my membership, this being mainly due to having
limited funds that must instead be directed towards my current
activities in the area of alternative astro-physics.
I would love to be a life-long member of all the groups I havebeen drawn into in the past but that would be impractical. In termsof cutting my ties with weather satellite monitoring, I fully intend
to build on what I learned as a GEO member, in fact, it was myactivities there that helped open the door to my current area ofinterest. This seems to be how my succession of hobbies has
worked for me.
Thank you again for your interest in my involvement with the GEO
group. I intend to remain a subscriber to the GEO internet forum
on Yahoo. I wish you ongoing success and satisfaction in your roleof GEO Director and offer a special special thank you to the GEO
group and its members.
Take care ... Tom Findlay, England.
www.geo-web.org.uk

37

GEO Quarterly No 34

The Group for Earth Observation

June 2012

John Tellick

Meteosat-7 image from February 13, 2012 showing Category 4

Metop-A AVHRR image from January 27, 2012 showing
Cyclone Funso tracking down the Mozambique Channel.

Cyclone Giovanna crossing the coast of Madagascar.
Image © EUMETSAT 2012

Image © EUMETSAT 2012

January and February 2012 have seen two intense Category-4
cyclones in the southwestern Indian Ocean. Category-2 cyclone
Funso caused considerable damage, flooding and some lossof life in Mozambique, but thankfully proceeded to track down
the Mozambique Channel between Africa and Madagascar as
it strengthened to category-4. Considering the intensity of thisstorm, nearby African countries were fortunate to be spared fromits destructive winds of up to 220 kph. Funso arrived only a few
days after tropical depression Dando which caused flooding toseveral SE African countries in the same area.
In February cyclone Giovanna headed ominously towards
Madagascar for several days as it developed into a category-4
storm. Giovanna made landfall in the early morning of
February 14, just north of Vatomandry and continued to trackacross a large part of the island at category-3. Giovanna caused
considerable damage to homes, crops and, power lines; trees
blocked roads and there was serious flooding; and there were 16
deaths while 11,000 were made homeless. After downgrading toa tropical storm, Gilvanna meandered down the southwest coast
Madagascar for another four days before heading back into theIndian Ocean, where it briefly increased to a category-2 cyclone
again before finally petering out.

38

Cyclone Giovanna’s actual and predicted track as of February 20, 2012.

www.geo-web.org.uk

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

www.geo-web.org.uk

GEO Quarterly No 34

39

GEO Quarterly No 34

The Group for Earth Observation

June 2012

Francis BellIt was just a few days after writing for GEO Quarterly 33 my brief
reviews of three space related journals received, free of charge,
from ESA, EUMETSAT and the Natural Environment ResearchCouncil, that a further free publication dropped through my letterbox. This was Space:UK published by the new UK Space Agency(UKSA).
Looking back through past GEO Quarterlies, I note that I had
reviewed this publication before in our Launch Edition in 2004.
However, in those days, it was published by the British National
Space Centre (BNSC), a partnership between six Government
Departments, two Research Councils, the Met Office and theTechnology Strategic Board. This has recently evolved into the new
UK Space Agency. In the past, I have had dealings with BNSC,
visiting their offices in London and attending their conferencesin Godalming, Surrey with GEO exhibition materials. Also, in the
educational section of Space:UK, there have been reports ofpersonal radio contacts made by my school with the MIR spacestation and several NASA space shuttles. Although I am not fully
up-to-date with the changes relating to BNSC, I believe all their
responsibilities have been transferred to the newly formed UK
Space Agency.
I know UKSA held their first conference for the UK Space Industry
in Manchester last year. I am told that the UK Space Industry is
worth about £6.5 billion annually to the UK economy and indirectly
supports about 65,000 jobs. I have no inside knowledge, butwith such a massive industry to coordinate, a national agency
seems logical, hence the birth of the UK Space Agency. I do
not know the mandate or terms of reference for UKSA but I am
researching this for my own satisfaction and understanding. If there
is a knowledgeable member within GEO it would be great to be
informed about those matters, which would be of interest from ourperspective of Earth observation and weather satellites. This is adirect request—so if you think you can contribute UKSA information,please let myself or the editor know so that we can share it withothers. The UKSA’s web site iswww.bis.gov.uk/ukspaceagency

and I am reading these informative pages with interest.
Magazine Review
The winter 2011 edition of Space:UK is slightly bigger than usual,with 26 high quality colour pages. The editorial directive is that the
publication should try to cover the whole range of British spaceendeavours. Reflecting UKSA’s new publishing responsibility,
page two carries a report by Emma Lord, Director of Policy andOperations for UKSA, which is worth reading, anticipating, as it
does, UKSA’s priorities for 2012.
Other articles include reports relating to new missions researching
the Sun and Dark Matter, Rescue Satellites, the Martianadventures, Farewell to ERS-2, Underground Astronauts, a mainfeature relating to a mission to Mercury (including a Mercury pullout poster), an article on Living in Space, and UK Rocket Pioneers.
The final five pages are devoted to an educational and careers
section.
RequestThis is a request directed towards GEO members who may beinterested in receiving this free publication on a regular basis. The
availability of this publication in a printed format depends on there
being a viable number of subscribers/readers: see my reviews in
GEOQ33. Please apply to UKSA to receive this free publication.
With my last copy I received a renewal card which I have40completed and returned to UKSA, but it is clear that new readers
can also apply to receive regular copies. There does not seem tobe an email contact address, so send a letter or card asking to be
included on the distribution list.
Be sure to include in your letter, your name and full postal address
with post code and country. Say what organisation you represent(GEO), and state something like: “I wish to subscribe to UKSA’s
newsletters and mailings, including Space:UK”. Then say how
many copies you would like: for most people this will be one but, if
you belong to a club or other group, you may ask for two or more
copies.
Address your letter to:Newsletter and Space:UK Subscription
UK Space Agency
Polaris House
North Star Avenue
Swindon SN2 1SZ
It is worth noting that there is a request for ‘country’ in thesubscriber’s address, so people outside the UK may also be able
to receive Space:UK free of charge. It’s worth a try. Please action
the above subscription request for this and other publications. If you
don’t then one day they may not be available in printed format.
Finally. Those who have a copy of the Winter 2011 Space:UK may
be able to answer my question about the phonetic spelling of theword ‘optic’, spoken with a Welsh accent. Is the answer on theinside back cover of this latest Space:UK publication?

www.geo-web.org.uk

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 34

A NASA Earth Observatory Report

The 5426 metre high Popocatépetl (Aztec for ‘Smoking Mountain’) is situated 70 kilometres southeast of Mexico City and is one of
Mexico’s most active volcanoes. It has been showing signs of increasing eruptive activity since the start of 2012, with near constantventing from fumaroles and minor steam, gas, and ash emissions. By mid-April, activity had increased significantly, when explosions were
propelling volcanic blocks 500 meters beyond the crater rim while substantial ash plumes were rising 1.5 kilometres above it.
The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument flying aboard NASA’s Terra satellite
captured this false-colour image of the volcano at 17:17 UT on April 23, showing a plume of gas and steam drifting east above the crater.
The red colour depicts forests and vegetation surrounding the volcano.
The last major eruption of Popocatépetl occurred 1200 years ago, when vast quantities of lava and ash from it completely filled many of
the surrounding valleys. Since then, there have been at least five moderate eruptions, two of them during the 1900s.

www.geo-web.org.uk

41

GEO Quarterly No 34

The Group for Earth Observation

June 2012

Les Hamilton
I recently received a number of emails from
Graeme Caie, who lives in Aberdeen innortheast Scotland, relating his experienceswith an R2ZX APT receiver that he had
newly purchased from the GEO Shop.
Graeme had been involved with weather
satellite reception for many years, firstly
using a Maplin receiver that lacked PLL
tuning. This, of course, was in the years
before pager interference blighted thehobby, and, despite the simplicity of thereceiver, image quality was excellent.
Graeme went on to build several receivers
himself, all of which produced excellent
images—until the pager problem started. Atthat time Cirkit were producing a receiverwith a 30 kHz IF, which continued to
produce good images until the reception
frequencies changed with the arrival of
NOAA‑18 and NOAA‑19. Unfortunately,
these new frequencies were not accessible
with the crystals in the receiver, andGraeme moved away from the hobby.
After several years, Graeme felt the urge
to resurrect his hobby before APT diedand, on the recommendation of GEO,
purchased an R2ZX, which he describes as‘this wonderful little receiver—what a gem’.
Within an hour, Graeme had already picked
up NOAAs -15, -18 and -19 using an indoor
antenna, without any pager problems.
Graeme continued: ‘Having attempted manythings to remove the interference from myreceivers, and failed, I think this design isbrilliant’.
Graeme has now built a crossed dipole
antenna and slung it on to a tree at the backof his garden. Some of Graeme’s images
appear below. and on page 43 I suspect,
though, that he may have to reposition his
aerial once the trees come into full leaf.

A NOAA-15 image from 13:51 UT on April 15, 2012

42

Part of the 13:13 UT NOAA-19 image on April 15, 2012, received using an indoor antenna.

www.geo-web.org.uk

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 34

April showers over Europe in this image, acquired from NOAA‑19 using the tree-mounted antenna, on April 21, 2012.

www.geo-web.org.uk

43

GEO Quarterly No 34

The Group for Earth Observation

June 2012

Ukraine’s Sich-2 satellite continues to transmit regular high-resolution images of selected locations
on the Earth’s surfaces. The images below include extremes, a cityscape and a mountain range.
Images courtesy Dniprokosmos (www.dniprokosmos.dp.uk)

The United States city of Cincinnati was imaged by Sich-2 on March 6, 2012

Sich-2 imaged these snow-covered mountain ranges near Ighil M’Goun (4071 m) in Morocco’s High Atlas on February 27, 2012.

44www.geo-web.org.uk

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 34

A NASA Earth Observatory Report

Chile’s Puyehue-Cordón Caulle Volcano erupted explosively in early
June 2011, sending volcanic ash around the Southern Hemisphere.
By late December, although activity at the volcano had calmed,
volcanic ash and steam continued to pour through the fissure that
opened in June, the airborne ash continuing to cause disruptions to
air travel through the region to Patagonia.
Reaching an altitude of 2,236 meters, Puyehue-Cordón Caulle
is a stratovolcano, a steep-sloped, conical volcano composed oflayers of ash, lava, and rocks released by previous eruptions. This
volcano comprises part of the largest active geothermal area in thesouthern Andes. Evergreen forests to the east of the volcano havebeen damaged by months of nearly continuous ashfall whereas

forests to the west have only received intermittent coatings ofash and appear relatively healthy. The government of Chile has
declared an agricultural emergency for the Los Rios region due tothe destruction caused by ash falls.
The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1(EO-1) satellite captured this natural-colour image on December
23, 2011. The active fissure lies northwest of the Puyehue caldera,
and a plume blows from the fissure toward the west and north. This
image shows not just ash but also snow on the volcano surface,
including the caldera.

www.geo-web.org.uk

NASA Earth Observatory image created by Jesse Allen, using
EO-1 ALI data provided courtesy of the NASA EO-1 team.

45

GEO Quarterly No 34

EUMETCast On-Line
Registration Guide
If you require to register as a first-time user for
any of the free EUMETCast data streams suchas MSG, NOAA AVHRR, Metop etc., or needto renew an existing subscription, this must be
done on-line.
GEO has produced a step-by-step guide to theentire process at
http://www.geo-web.org.uk/eumreg.html
This guide also contains a direct link to theofficial EUMETCast on-line registration form,
which can otherwise prove somewhat tricky tolocate.

GEO Helplines
Douglas Deans

The Group for Earth Observation

Weather Satellite Reports
If there is a single Internet Forum that isrelevant to all weather satellite enthusiasts,
it must surely be Douglas Deans’ Weather
Satellite reports.
Here you will find every conceivable type of
information about weather satellites, whether
polar or geostationary, APT, HRPT, LRIT orwhatever.
Absolutely everything is covered, and theinformation is updated every week. Special
additional bulletins may be issued if an
important change takes place mid week.
You can read the bulletins from this URL

Dunblane, Perthshire, SCOTLAND.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/
weather-satellite-reports/
or, even better, elect to have the reports sent
to you by email every Monday.

John Tellick
Surbiton, Surrey, ENGLAND.
Meteosat-9 advice: registering for the various
MSG services, hardware and software
installation and troubleshooting. John will
also field general queries about any aspect ofreceiving weather satellite transmissions.
• telephone: (0208) 390 3315
• e-mail: info@geo-web.org.uk

There are a numerous Internet-based
discussion groups available to weather satellite
enthusiasts. You can join any of these by
sending an e-mail to the appropriate address,
with a request to subscribe. Indeed, a blanke-mail containing the word ‘subscribe’ in its
Subject line is all that is required. Some of themore useful groups and their contact addresses
are listed below.

All aspects of weather satellites from APT,
HRPT to Meteosat-9 DVB/EUMETCast
systems.
• telephone:(01786) 82 28 28• e-mail: dsdeans@tiscali.co.uk

Geoff Morris GW3ATZ
Shotton, Flintshire, NE WALES.
Geoff has lots of experience with aerial,coax,connectors, mounting hardware etc. andhas also done a lot of work with the orbiting
satellites. Geoff has been a EUMETCast
Meteosat-9 user for some time and is 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
Mike Stevens
Portland, Dorset, England.
Advice and assistance offered on EUMETCast(MSG and Metop) and Envi-Ham (including
ESA’s Visat software for decoding the images).
• email: mike1g4cfz@msn.com
Guy Martin G8NFU
Biggin Hill NW Kent, ENGLAND
Guy is prepared to advise anyone who wishing
to receive MSG/Metop using Windows 2000 or
XP. Can also help with networking and ADSL
router setup.
• gmartin@electroweb.co.uk
Hector Cintron
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
Email contact can of course be made at any
time, but we would ask you to respect privacy
by restricting telephone contact to the period
7.00-9.00 pm in the evenings.

46

Internet Discussion Groups

APT Decoder
This is a group where users of Patrik Tast’s
APTDecoder can share information andproblems.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/
group/APTDecoder/
GEO-Subscribers
This is GEO’s own group, where members can
exchange information and post queries relating
to any aspect related to weather satellite
reception (hardware, software, antennas etc),
Earth observation satellites and any GEOrelated matter.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/
group/GEO-Subscribers/
Satsignal
An end-user self help group for users ofDavid Taylor’s Satellite Software Tools(SatSignal, WXtrack, GeoSatSignal, HRPT
Reader, GroundMap, MSG Data Manager,
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 share
information about the EUMETCast reception
hardware and software.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/
group/MSG-1/

www.geo-web.org.uk

June 2012

Copy Deadline for
GEO Quarterly No 34 is
Sunday, August 5, 2012
The Editor is always delighted to receive
articles and images for inclusion in
GEO Quarterly. These can relate to any
aspect of Earth Imaging, especially• Technical articles concerning relevant
hardware and 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 toanswerContributions should of course be original
and, where possible, should be submitted
to the editor in electronic format (e-mailattachment, CD, DVD). But of course, wewould also accept handwritten or typed copy.
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: JPG, BMP, GIF, TIFF etc.
Images in both monochrome and colour are
welcomed. Line drawings and diagrams are
preferred in WMF, EPS or postscript formats.
We can also scan original photographs,
negatives and slides.
Gridding, Overlays and Captions
Please note that readers’ satellite images
should be provided without added grid lines,
country outlines or captions unless these areconsidered essential for illustrative purposes
within an article.
If your article submission contains embedded
images and diagrams, please note that you
must also submit copies of the original
images in one of the formats describedabove: these are essential for page make-up
purposes.
Submission of Copy
Materials for publication should be sent to
the editor,
Les Hamilton
8 Deeside Place
Aberdeen AB15 7PW
ScotlandThe most efficient way to do this is by email
attachments to the following address
geoeditor@geo-web.org.uk
Particularly large attachments (8 MB andabove) can be transmitted via YouSendIt
www.yousendit.com_________________________
And finally . . .
if you do have material ready for the next
issue of GEO Quarterly, please submit it
as soon as it is ready—do not wait till thedeadline above: this will simply create an
editorial log-jam and delay publication.

June 2012

The Group for Earth Observation

www.geo-web.org.uk

GEO Quarterly No 34

47

GEO Quarterly No 34

48

The Group for Earth Observation

www.geo-web.org.uk

June 2012

Mike Stevens spotted this Envisat MERIS image of the Southern Aral Sea, dating from March 21, 2012, with the winter ice cover starting to break up
Image © ESA

Another fine MERIS image from Mike Stevens, this time showing detail in the English Channel on March 3, 2012
Image © ESA