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.
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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.
It is interesting how comparisons of North Korea and South Korea suggest political deficiencies in the north while a similar visual contrast between the western and eastern US is not mentioned. I think the black marble imagery is as misleading as are red/blue voting pattern maps. The misinformation is common of stacked images where transient artifacts appear as import as static features. Bogosity at it’s best.
As examples of art they are quite lovely, though.
And how much CO2 is produced by these fires in comparison to say car use in Australia? One rarely hears about how much CO2 is caused by fires (natural, slash and burn, and unfortunately those caused by the deliberate or reckless behavoir of humans).
Anthony, don’t be silly. Those lights are just a bunch of jackeroos enjoying a barbie out back o’ Bourke.
For interested parties the fires aren’t there for dubious carbon credit claims. They are generally started by lightning and can burn for weeks, even months. There is little human infrastructure in most of the areas affected so, in most cases, no reason to attempt to interfere in nature’s workings.
Why does the cynic in me find myself questioning NASA’s use of nighttime composite photography to represent and exaggerate mankind’s footprint on the face of the earth? They would never plump that particular point of view, right.
wayne Job, interesting, if you have pictures of the fire event you witnessed, many people would pay money to see them.
Following on from Johanna, the Geoscience Australia site [http://sentinel.ga.gov.au/acres/sentinel/index.shtml] won’t show many current fires over the featured part of Western Australia despite a lot of recent lightning storms as there has been quite a bit of rain accompanying the storms. Just a bit wet for fires at the moment. Wait till it dries !!
Some good fires in North Queensland though.
We took a flight from Uluru to Darwin a couple of years ago and saw numerous columns of smoke from fires even though it was only just the start of the dry season. It seems that fire is an ever present through Australias history.
This website sums it up well.
http://www.savanna.org.au/all/fire.html
If anyone has any proof that wild fires in Oz are different in 2012 than they were 40,000 years ago this would be an excellent venue to make your case. Give it your best shot because it will be your only shot.
Jimbo says: December 9, 2012 at 3:55 am re Gore on Queensland floods
I was born within a few km of the origin of the big floods that Brisbane took, just after the Toowoomba floods. It is important to know that Toowoomba resides on a ridge that marks a river divide. Rain to the East of the Divide flows to Brisbane; rain to the west flows to the Darling Downs and eventually into the Murray-Darling system (if there is enough).
The big Brisbane flood would not have happened if the east edge of the storm was (let’s say) 20 km further west than where it was. It would have flowed away from Brisbane.
The Toowoomba floods largely hurt the town because man had impeded river flow with structures. Water built up too fast to disperse.
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The relevance? No climate model of which I am aware can resolve the projected position of future storms to within a few tens of km. They can’t usually get even continent-sized projections too good.
The flood that hit Brisbane had nothing to do with global warming or climate change in the sense that a better knowledge of either would have prevented it, or even forecast it.
It is just so unscientific to claim fasle prophesy after the event and rig your figures in hindsight to make your case.
I’m glad more people have become aware of the Geoscience Australia site which gives real time info about bushfires in Australia. I found it some years ago, when fires were close to where I live. You can zoom in for more details.
However, I’m still puzzled that anyone really believes that vast areas of sandy and/or stony desert were ravaged by massive fires over such a short period. OK, say a bit of spinifex was hit by lightning and burned for a few minutes. These images do not differentiate between that and a raging forest fire, or the lightning strikes themselves. I agree with Rick and dp – they are pretty pictures, but seriously misrepresent what is going on.