From NASA – Wildfires Light Up Western Australia (nothing unusual here, it happens every year) A stunning video of the Earth at night follows.
Careful observers of the new “Black Marble” images of Earth at night released this week by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have noticed bright areas in the western part of Australia that are largely uninhabited. Why is this area so lit up, many have asked?
Away from the cities, much of the night light observed by the NASA-NOAA Suomi NPP satellite in these images comes from wildfires. 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.
The extent of the night lights in this area is also a function of composite imaging. These new images were assembled from data acquired over nine days in April 2012 and 13 days in October 2012. This means fires and other lighting (such as ships) could have been detected on any one day and integrated into the composite picture, despite being temporary phenomena.
Because different areas burned at different times when the satellite passed over, the cumulative result in the composite view gives the appearance of a massive blaze. These fires are temporary features, in contrast to cities which are always there.
Other features appearing in uninhabited areas in these images could include fishing boats, gas flaring, lightning, oil drilling, or mining operations, which can show up as points of light. One example is natural gas drilling in the Bakken Formation in North Dakota.
###
Here is a video of the Earth at night, showing the expanse of human development via energy. It is hard not to think of UHI when viewing these images.
Images of Australia April 2012 and October 2012.
Hmmm … therefore not surprising not much showing up in Queensland. April, wet season, somewhat protracted this year, so the fire season that would normally have commenced in September was delayed. (Around here, second week of the September school holidays is often a “bad time”.) The October fly-over would not have picked up much in the way of controlled burning, as that is carried out in daylight hours. Local firies predicted a major fire season this year, and yes, late November early December has been busy.
Once the Greenies here in Australia see this one they will go absolutely bananas. They will not realise that it has been going on since the year dot, but will immediately attribute it all to catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and slap yet another tax onto us!
Nix says:
December 8, 2012 at 9:01 am
Good pic! Thanks.
I agree with John Gardner – something not right there in the WA image. The smoke from fires that size would obscure the light; a lot of that land is semi-desert or desert; the areas depicted are massive. There is absolutely nothing that would generate a decent fire for thousands of square miles in some of those regions.
Either there is massive magnification of the light going on, or things like lightning are being picked up and extrapolated over large areas.
markx says:
December 8, 2012 at 6:20 am
That is one helluva lot of wildfires …. hard to imagine that much of Australia burning over 9 days without any comment?
You have to understand these areas are completely uninhabited. Even big fires hardly ever make the Perth news.
In the 1970s one fire burned continuously for 2 years over 30 million acres. Yet it doesn’t make the various bushfire lists, because no one was affected.
Another fire in the 1990s killed 70,000 emus. It was only reported because the emus were piled up along the fence that separates the agricultural belt from the uninhabited forest. It happened I travelled through the area of the fire a week after it burned out and there were dead kangaroos everywhere.
Also, no effort is ever made to control these fires. They are just left to burn.
This time of year, a lot of thunderstorms and lightning spread through that area of Western Australian desert country. Mostly spinifex grasses, fires start easily as they are high in resin. The one light in the NW corner of the image is my home town of Broome, with a population of about 16,000. These fires are prolific at this time of year, in the Kimberley at least a third is burnt every year. Smoke can always be smelled in the first rainwater of the year. Chemicals in the smoke are an aid to germination of many desert plant species.
Tom Harley, I take your point – but remember, these images are for only 9 days in April and 13 days in October. At that rate – all of WA will be a pile of smoking embers by Christmas!
Correction.
In the 1970s one fire burned continuously for 2 years over 30 million hectares. Which is the size of Arizona.
Some years ago I was traveling on a motorcycle, from Catherine to Broome on our going down of the sun road on New Years eve. It was hot as hell with the sun straight in my face, clear blue sky for ever. In the distance two huge isolated thunderstorms, the 60 thousand feet tall monsters that inhabit the area.
As I approached them they were blocking the sun much to my relief, the road turned down into a small valley with red cliffs and all hell broke loose. Lightning like a military barrage, it did not just hit the ground it skipped and danced, lighting hundreds of fires for as far as I could see. It was a scene from Dante.
I stopped in that valley for about an hour in total awe. To quote Maxwell Smart “missed me by that much.”
I remember as a kid in SE Qld we used to celebrate Guy Fawkes night in November – a British tradition.
Everyone built huge bonfires and let off all kinds of fireworks – it was great.
Except – September – November here is usually very dry and November can get quite hot – over 30 C with very low humidity.
Every year the hills around where I lived would catch fire and burn for weeks.
The practice was banned in the early 70s.
Bushfires burn over a narrow front. The image above must be showing the heat plumes from fires, not the fires themselves that would show up as narrow lines.
This video looks like a composite of many images taken over time. Making it look as though there are many fires in W.A. at once when in fact there may have been only a few a each time an image was taken. Same for the the rest.
Thanks, Johanna. One more thing folks, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology satellite image shows no visible smoke at the moment (and rarely does, in my experience, except for huge bushfires), hence my 1% bet for bushfires as being the primary cause of the ‘night light’ on this image of Australia. Lets apply a bit of common sense here – if it ain’t bushfires, and it ain’t streetlights or cars 😉 out there in the desert, let’s look at the weather map – lots of upper level troughs moving from W to E across the country at the moment with lots of thunderstorms (4 storms dropped 6 inches of rain on my house in Brisbane on a single weekend only a couple of weeks ago) and lots and lots of lightning (just ask my cat!). Add to this the statement that this satellite adds the PEAK brightnesses and therefore it will sum all the light from all the lightning strikes in each storm for a period of several days to generate this image. Enough twaddle about us Aussies having humungous (nonexistent) bushfires all over the country, just because some new satellite shows some unexplained ‘bright spots’, OK?
A propaganda film. Obviously over exposed. A fabrication. Anyone doing film recognizes the fallacy here.
In case you haven’t guessed by now, they are called “bushfires”, not “wildfires”.
Why is it every-time I read past the end of the articles on this site i find the first comments are made by sarcastic retarded jackasses and have no relevance to the article. I have no interest in Al Gore or his “evidence of global warming” I read this article as i found it interesting and i wanted to read the comments to see other people’s opinions on the article (alternative explanations for light in the Australian outback etc). I don’t enjoy having to sift through sarcastic and irrelevant crap every time i look through the comment section. If it was a one off I wouldn’t mind so much it seems to be a recurring theme. If you have nothing relevant to say don’t comment! save the global warming sarcasm for the posts related to climate change or politics.
Thank you to everyone that posted relevant and interesting comments. Not you “Jimbo” you’re a tool so I didn’t bother reading you later posts.
I agree with John Gardner – the bush fires in the top end occur in the winter and are all started by man. Station owners start them to get extra green grass for their cattle, indigenous peoples start them as it’s supposedly their tradition. Local land councils have people employed to start fires. Driving from Kununurra to Wyndham at dusk I noted fires had been lit every kilometer, the resultant fires burnt for days. From Broome in the west to Karumba on the Gulf was on fire!
There’s a big difference between the original nomadic tribes wandering the area with a fire stick and a Toyota landcruiser troopee with 5 guys with diesel guns as occurs today.
The burning of the top end of Australia every winter is IMHO one of the worst nature disasters on the planet. The vegetation can hardly survive it – small gum trees that have been ring barked by fire every year eventually give up and fall over – you see them everywhere. We called them “falldown trees” and they were great for firewood as they shattered into small pieces when they hit the ground. Broome to Fitzroy Crossing will eventually become like the Nullarbor – no trees – yet I eventually found a patch that hadn’t been burnt. It had tall beautiful trees, birds, roos and wildlife everywhere. The burning of the grasses takes away the seed for birds so you see few birds where there once used to be huge flocks. According to the owner of the Bird Park south of Broome whilst they continue the burning we’ll never see the huge flocks again.
” John W. Garrett says:December 8, 2012 at 6:11 am
and would be utterly terrified by true darkness or 20-foot seas. ”
Darkness no but if 20 foot seas don’t make a knot in your gut you are either on a very large ship or have a stronger constitution than me.
Great video. North east Italy along the Adriatic was just totally lit up. Was not expecting that much.
Thanks
I’m sorry Janama, I didn’t say anything in my two posts about who may have started these probably non-existent bushfires, so please don’t associate my name and opinions with your polemic dissertation.
If you want to see where the actual bushfires are in Australia at any time, this site will show you:
http://sentinel.ga.gov.au/acres/sentinel/index.shtml
You need javascript enabled, and have to click through a disclaimer page to see the image. Notably, most of the fires today are in the tropical far North. Not a lot of activity in the deserts – perhaps because nothing much grows there? It is simply a myth that there are significant fires which we know nothing about, as this continuous satellite imaging service demonstrates.
Very nifty, and reminds us that not all of our taxes are wasted!
Most of these would not be wildfires, but deliberately set by Australian Aboriginals as part of their traditional hunting practices.
In a dry year in the 1980s, can’t recall it exactly, I flew in a Fokker F28 for 35 minutes with a single line of fire visible out the window, south of Mt Newman. It was long and narrow, but if you integrated the brightness over days, you would get patterns like are shown. Proof of this is immediately obvious when you study even 1950s B&W aerial photography from most of WA that is not under agriculture. You see scars hundreds of km wide and long, overlaid on top of each other as a mosiac. The answer to the satellite view problem expressed above is to show single shots, as well as time-integrated ones, to clear up the impression being given. There is a lot of combustible grass and very, very few people to cause lights.
Hi enoughsarcasm,
How is your morning? I hope you apologize to me for having to read through your non-content filled rant.
My first comment was not as silly as it seemed so next time do some looking before flying your mouth off.
More on Al Gore and Australian wildfires.
http://climatecommission.gov.au/videos/al-gore-salutes-australia-climate-action/
http://www.voanews.com/content/a-13-2009-07-13-voa8-68819907/413396.html
Did you see the words “Australia” and “fire” and the name “Al Gore”? My sarcastic comment has roots and it’s not beyond possibility that Gore could have assigned blame.
Geoff, according to the interpretation given of those images there were massive fires in the Little Sandy Desert, the Gibson Desert, the Nullarbor and the Great Victoria Desert – and all in the space of a few days.
I don’t think so.
johanna says: December 8, 2012 at 11:00 pm
” If you want to see where the actual bushfires are in Australia at any time, this site will show you:
http://sentinel.ga.gov.au/acres/sentinel/index.shtml
Wow …nice site Johanna, thanks for the link!
And seeing the number of fires happening in the last 12 hours in the northern part of Australia is amazing! The video may be plausible after all, although I think there is a lot more to burn in the north than in the west.
http://sentinel2.ga.gov.au/Sentinel/imf.jsp (last 12 hours)