Marufish BLoG

MODIS Aqua chlorophyll a (top), sea surface temperature (middle) and RGB (bottom) on 30 Oct 2007. High chlorophyll a extended south from Java Island. Cool water remain at Southern Java and Sumatra Island.

The human toll of a nuclear blast (Click on link to view the movie from MSN)

MODIS Aqua chlorophyll a (top), sea surface temperature (middle) and RGB (bottom) on 24 Oct 2007.

MODIS Aqua chlorophyll a (top), sea surface temperature (middle) and RGB (bottom) images of Northern Borneo. The Baram River Plume (114E 4.5N) is flowing towards the northeast direction.

MODIS Aqua chlorophyll a (top), sea surface temperature (middle) and RGB (bottom) images on 18 Oct 2007. High chlorophyll a tongue extended from eastern Java towards the south. This phenomena very much similar to that in 2006. IOD driven coastal upwelling still persist at Southern Java. Reducing cloud observed at Southern Sumatra, Southern Kalimantan and whole Java Island.

Very clear MODIS Aqua images for Vietnam on 16 Oct 2007. Warm water observe near the mouth of Mekong river.

MODIS Aqua Chlorophyll a (top) and Sea Surface Temperature images for Sumatra and Java on 16 Oct 2007

A Decade of Ocean Color NASA Earth Observatory New Images http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17801 It may seem obvious that life is distributed across Earth in uneven patches: lush forests teem with life, while barren deserts support a relatively small number of specialized plants and animals. But scientists have only started to glimpse the pattern of life in Earth’s oceans with the advent of Earth-orbiting satellites, and the greatest contribution has come from a small satellite called the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS). Designed to orbit the Earth for five years collecting information about the oceans, SeaWiFS entered its eleventh year of operation in September 2007. Along with its predecessor, the Coastal Zone Color Scanner, the satellite provided scientists their first view of how plants are distributed across the globe’s oceans and revealed that, like land, the oceans contain rainforest-like areas where plants proliferate and d...

Hotspots put Sarawak on haze alert The Star, 5 Oct 2007 http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/10/5/nation/19085103&sec=nation MIRI: Sarawak has been placed on haze alert with 130 major fires having been detected in Kalimantan. Shifting cultivators in rural Sarawak have also started burning their farmlands and hillslopes to prepare for the planting season. Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr George Chan Hong Nam, who is state Disaster Relief Committee chairman, said the fires in Kalimantan were large enough to be detected by satellites. “There are about 130 hotspots already in Kalimantan. In Sarawak, we have detected about 71 cases of burning in the central region. “These local fires are not big. They are scattered fires here and there caused by open burning carried out by interior farmers and shifting cultivators,” he said. He was commenting on the presence of a persistently hazy-looking skyline over various parts of the state over the past week. Dr Chan said there was no im...

Chlorophyll a and Sea surface temperature of eastern Indian Ocean on 12 Oct 2007. Very warm water observed around the Malay Peninsular.

Large phytoplankton bloom extended far south of Java. Cooler coastal water due to upwelling. Indian Ocean Dipole still around!

La Nina may set Bay on fire 12 Oct 2007, from Business Line http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2007/10/13/stories/2007101352861200.htm by Vinson Kurian Thiruvananthapuram, Oct. 12 All leading international weather models are now convinced that a La Nina event (colder counterpart of El Nino) is strengthening, with a warming anomaly getting entrenched in the west-central to north-west Pacific. While the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) had sounded a related warning earlier this month, the latest update by the US National Centres of Environmental Prediction (NCEP) goes to confirm it further. La Nina conditions develop when eastern and central equatorial Pacific (near the South American coast) cool down concurrently with a comparable warming of the equatorial west Pacific. This is just the reverse of El Nino and is widely believed seen as aiding annual precipitation over Australia, India and Indonesia. In La Nina years, the easterly winds from the Americas are stronger than usual. T...

MODIS Aqua Chlorophyll a image show high chlorophyll a around the Mekong river mouth that extended far into the off shore water. The Southwest monsoon upwelling already disappeared. High nLw 551 around the Mekong River mouth shows high turbidity water. The Sea Surface Temperature is very high at the South China Sea area. Turbid water from Mekong River can be clearly seen in the RGB image. Greenish color after the turbid water show the evidence of phytoplankton bloom. It is amazingly clear in this RGB image.

MODIS Aqua Images on 9 Oct 2007. Very high sea surface temperature around the eastern Sumatra.

Latest Indian Ocean Dipole Images from MODIS Aqua MODIS Aqua Chlorophyll a (top), sea surface temperature (middle), RGB (bottom) images on 9 Oct 2007. The coastal upwelling at southern Java still very strong that trigger large phytoplankton bloom.

INTERVIEW-Oceans interact to dry Australia further From Reuters http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSSYD217753 By Michael Byrnes SYDNEY, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Interactions between major oceans, triggered by climate change, will produce increasingly dry conditions in southern parts of Australia for decades to come, projections by the country's main science organisation show. Further projected decreases in rainfall in southwest and southeast Australia could be arrested if carbon dioxide emission increases were halted, but a full recovery would take around 600 years, Dr Wenju Cai, a leading scientist with the government-backed Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) said. "The recovery takes a long, long time.... Not in our lifetime," Cai said. As it stands, the CSIRO is confidently forecasting a further 10-15 percent decline in rainfall in southeast Australia and a decline of over 20 percent in southwest Australia by 2050. This takes in A...

API readings indicate moderate haze in Penang News from NST, Malaysia http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Friday/NewsBreak/20071005183226/Article/index_html BERNAMA 5 Oct 2007, PENANG, Fri.: The air quality in Penang today is moderate with the Air Pollutant Index (API) readings at below 85 and pose no threat to public health. A state Meteorological Department spokesman when contacted by Bernama said Seberang Jaya on the mainland recorded the highest API reading at 85 compared to 77 yesterday.The API readings in Perai and Universiti Sains Malaysia taken today were 66 and 63 respectively (63 and 59 yesterday).Visibility in Perai was at 6km and in Butterworth at 4km.The haze is believed to be caused by open burning in Sumatra, Indonesia

Expert predicts dry Spring News from theage.com.au http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Expert-predicts-dry-Spring/2007/10/04/1191091265433.html October 4, 2007 - 4:54PM Drought-stricken farmers in Australia's south-east, desperate for rain to grow grain crops, face the prospect of spring rainfall 40 per cent below the annual average. CSIRO scientist Dr Wenju Cai told an agri-climate change conference in Sydney that this year's rainfall in the country's south-east should be almost the same as in 1967, when spring rains were 40 per cent below the norm. It's the first year since then that a coincidence has occurred of two particular global weather events - an Indian Ocean Dipole and a La Nina. "In 1967, spring rainfall in most of south-eastern Australia was about 40 per cent lower than average," Dr Cai told the Greenhouse 2007 Program audience. "Although a La Nina event would normally give us more rainfall over eastern Australia, it seems to have been ove...

Three-headed dog cruels spring hopes News from The Sydney Morning Herald Deborah Smith Science EditorOctober 5, 2007 DROUGHT-STRICKEN farmers could face spring rainfall that is up to 40 per cent below average because of a rare weather pattern last seen 40 years ago. A CSIRO scientist, Wenju Cai, told the Greenhouse 2007 conference in Sydney yesterday that Australia was experiencing an unusual combination of two events: a La Nina phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean in the east, and an Indian Ocean Dipole phenomenon in the west. "The only time in [recorded] history we had this kind of combination was in 1967," he said. In that year, spring was extremely dry in the south and east of the country, and this could provide an indication of what was ahead in the next few months, he said. Although La Nina usually brings more rainfall to eastern Australia, it appeared to have been overwhelmed in 1967 by the positive Indian Ocean Dipole, which reduces rainfall across Australia, including i...

Sarawak on alert for possibility of haze From The STAR, 4 Oct 2007 MIRI: Sarawak has been placed on the alert for the possibility of transboundary haze following the detection of 130 major fires raging in Kalimantan Borneo, across the border from Sarawak. The State Disaster Relief Committee is being extra vigilant because shifting cultivators in rural Sarawak have also started open-burning of farmlands and hill slopes to prepare for the planting season. Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr George Chan Hong Nam, who is also the committee chairman, Thursday said the fires in Kalimantan are large enough to be detected from satellites. "There are about 130 hotspots already in Kalimantan. Inside Sarawak, we have detected some 71 cases of domestic burning in the central regions of the state. "These local fires are not big. They are scattered fires caused by open burning carried out by interior farmers and shifting cultivators," he said when interviewed Thursday. Dr Chan was asked ...

MODIS Aqua Chlorophyll a and Sea Surface Temperature Images on 1 Oct 2007 MODIS Aqua Chlorophyll a and Sea Surface Temperature Images on 2 Oct 2007

Today, I have visited Yasuoka and Takeuchi Laboratory in Tokyo University. They have two receiving facilities, one in AIT and another in Tokyo. They are providing the satellite images for free. I have checked some of the images for ocean and I found they can be read and process nicely with Seadas software. For detail, please check following Main page http://yasulab.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/index_e.html WebMODIS http://webmodis.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ Chlorophyll a Quicklook http://webmodis.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/AIT/CHL/ SST Quicklook http://webmodis.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/AIT/SST/ FTP for data ftp://webmodis.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/AIT/