What's going on in the middle of Australia?

[TrevorW]

For a comparison this site shows a NASA imagery compilation of Nrth American bush fires July-Oct 2012

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/8244061593/



Now I'm not saying that it's a conspiracy but

a) what is it really
b) why is it being referred to on several sites as city lights when it's obviously is not

[OICURMT]

Pg 11-13...

[OICURMT]

This years outlook

http://www.bushfirecrc.com/news/news...12-13-released

http://www.bushfirecrc.com/managed/r..._f95_final.pdf

[TrevorW]

Good read would explain somethings, but the extent and intensity indicated from these images seems high considering the bush fires in these regions would be mostly shrub/bush no trees it also seems strange that all those fires occurred in the space of a week or two while the imagery was being compiled or have I read it wrong.

[OICURMT]

Current storm tracker. Click on the Bushfire checkbox to get a "high-level" holistic view of where current bushfires are burning...

http://weather.ninemsn.com.au/stormtracker.jsp


MODIS Image of the Day that coincides with the Bushfires currently burning in QLD (12DEC2012).

http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/i...ate=2012-12-12

250m resolution http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/i...22012_250m.jpg

[Octane (Humayun)]

Let's just put it in the "artists' impression" APOD category and be done with it.

H

[TrevorW]

The Black marble imagery is described on the NASA Modis collection as city lights, and used in the APOD, please read the line I have made bold and underlined, this is straight from their site

City Lights of Asia and Australia


http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images...ia_tn_grid.jpg

• Credit:
  
  NASA Earth Observatory image by Robert Simmon, using Suomi NPP VIIRS data provided courtesy of Chris Elvidge (NOAA National Geophysical Data Center). Suomi NPP is the result of a partnership between NASA, NOAA, and the Department of Defense. Caption by Mike Carlowicz.

This image of Asia and Australia at night is a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite in April and October 2012. The new data was mapped over existing Blue Marble imagery of Earth to provide a realistic view of the planet.

The nighttime view was made possible by the new satellite’s “day-night band” of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite. VIIRS detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared and uses filtering techniques to observe dim signals such as city lights, gas flares, auroras, wildfires, and reflected moonlight. In this case, auroras, fires, and other stray light have been removed to emphasize the city lights.

“Night time imagery provides an intuitively graspable view of our planet,” says William Stefanov, a scientist in NASA’s International Space Station program office who has worked with similar images from astronauts. “City lights are an excellent means to track urban and suburban growth, which feeds into planning for energy use and urban hazards, for studying urban heat islands, and for initializing climate models.”

Named for satellite meteorology pioneer Verner Suomi, NPP flies over any given point on Earth's surface twice each day at roughly 1:30 a.m. and p.m. The polar-orbiting satellite flies 824 kilometers (512 miles) above the surface, sending its data once per orbit to a ground station in Svalbard, Norway, and continuously to local direct broadcast users distributed around the world. The mission is managed by NASA with operational support from NOAA and its Joint Polar Satellite System, which manages the satellite's ground system.

[OICURMT]

Originally Posted by TrevorW

In this case, auroras, fires, and other stray light have been removed to emphasize the city lights.

This statement was made in the original article for the cleaned up version of North and South American images. I suspect this statement is in a "general comments" field within the DB Schema and is repeated through tagging in the website, as all articles make *exactly* the same statement, with the first paragraph being image specific.

Also, the conspiracy was directly addressed by NASA here

Originally Posted by NASA

In the bright areas of western Australia, there are no nearby cities or industrial sites but, scientists have confirmed, there were fires in the area when Suomi NPP made passes over the region. This has been confirmed by other data collected by the satellite.

Look, I realize that you "Want To Believe", but honestly, lex parsimoniae. I may also be wrong, but I view this as a clear prima facie case.

[TrevorW]

Yeah, loved the X-files

"the truth is out there"

ps: on the same site and the APOD they state it's a compilation of images taken from April-Oct and yet on another they state is a compilation of images in a short time frame duing October so what is it.

I'm still amiss as to how such inaccurate statements can be displayed(made) on the NASA and APOD sites.

[Astro_Bot]

The ABC's story:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-2...lights/4437664

[astroron (Ron)]

Originally Posted by Astro_Bot

The ABC's story:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-2...lights/4437664

Just confirms what I said earlier in the thread
Cheers

[blink138 (Pat)]

it still does not explain africa...... their seasons on the whole are our seasons and it clearly looks like, if you believe they are fires, that about 25% of our country goes up in smoke over a two week period?....... strange.
anyhow i think africa should look at least similar or worse
pat

[AstralTraveller (David)]

Originally Posted by blink138

it still does not explain africa...... their seasons on the whole are our seasons and it clearly looks like, if you believe they are fires, that about 25% of our country goes up in smoke over a two week period?....... strange.
anyhow i think africa should look at least similar or worse
pat

My thoughts too - though those fires cover <<25% of Oz. There are fires visible in Africa but not nearly as many. If you compare the google map to the satellite images you can work out the fires from the settlements. Maybe the many large herbivores keeps the fuel load down, perhaps Africa is more closely managed and so fires are rarer (note that most fires in Oz are in the least settled areas), or we just got 'lucky' during those few weeks.

[TrevorW]

To true, I did some research and you can see a significant number of fires occurring in Africa over the same period (a lot of Countries in Africa have no fire management)

One comment in the ABC report is

"Aside from the fires, some of the night lights appearing in uninhabited areas can be attributed to natural gas flares, lightning, oil drilling or mining operations, and fishing boats - all of which can show up as points of light"

Fishing boats ??? where in the middle of Australia. look at the rest of the image can anyone see lights from fishing boats

Also look at PNG where are the lights of Port Moresby (they have electricity).

IMO there are anomalies with this image that just don't make sense.