by Kathryn Hansen NASA Earth Observatory
Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The October 2018 puzzler is above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us what we are looking at and why it is interesting.
How to answer. You can use a few words or several paragraphs. You might simply tell us the location. Or you can dig deeper and explain what satellite and instrument produced the image, what spectral bands were used to create it, or what is compelling about some obscure feature in the image. If you think something is interesting or noteworthy, tell us about it.
The prize. We can’t offer prize money or a trip to Mars, but we can promise you credit and glory. Well, maybe just credit. Roughly one week after a puzzler image appears on this blog, we will post an annotated and captioned version as our Image of the Day. After we post the answer, we will acknowledge the first person to correctly identify the image at the bottom of this blog post. We also may recognize readers who offer the most interesting tidbits of information about the geological, meteorological, or human processes that have shaped the landscape. Please include your preferred name or alias with your comment. If you work for or attend an institution that you would like to recognize, please mention that as well.
Recent winners. If you’ve won the puzzler in the past few months or if you work in geospatial imaging, please hold your answer for at least a day to give less experienced readers a chance to play.
Releasing Comments. Savvy readers have solved some puzzlers after a few minutes. To give more people a chance to play, we may wait between 24 to 48 hours before posting comments.
Good luck!
NOTE: WUWT readers are welcome to comment and speculate here, but to win the contest, you will need to post the comment on the NASA website here
Thanks, Anthony
Cheat success iss056e195043
My adult son is doing earth sciences at college, and gave me the latest NASA report. It said, the globe had warmed 1.8F since 1880 – 2017. Now converted the Celsius, that is MINUS 16.777. C. They are teaching this I told him to point this out to the teacher, maybe they were inviting comment.
Have you always been so cruel to your son?
It would be nice if science were to consistently use Kelvin but they don’t.
Taken from space eh? Its the box Michael Mann keeps his ego in on the rare occasion he isnt using it.
Time will come when kids won’t know what coffins look like.
Clouds hitting mountains,
Whoo, close to my apparently unique notion, but not quite.
What this looks like to me is the imprint of a wind farm along a ridge.
(Too bad that Anthony doesn’t have the government funding for PR stuff like this, though. The “winner” would undoubtedly become more famous by being acknowledged on WUWT.)
A fine example of that rarely seen phenomenon known as UNPRECEDENTED!
Looks to me like a cliff, with a temperature inversion and two cloud layers. One trapped by the invetsion an the cliff and one at high altitude. Need scale and topographical info to confirn or indeed have a better guess…
Oops typing on a train. Should be… and the cliff and inversion 🙂
It’s an ice floe in the ocean. The clouds above the ice appear diferent because they are leaving a shadow on the ice while in contrast not leaving a noticeable shadow on the darker ocean.
Got it!
You can see it on EOSDIS Worldview at:
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?p=antarctic&l=VIIRS_SNPP_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Aqua_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor,Coastlines&t=2018-09-01-T00%3A00%3A00Z&z=3&v=-2047255.6881764517,3013960.268591862,-1697559.6881764517,3182152.268591862
How did you ever find that?
Not very hard. A really large plateau iceberg like that would almost have to be in either the Ross or Weddell sea areas and since there were no sea ice nearby the Ross sea area was unlikely. So a few spot checks in the Scotia-Weddell area was enough.
Color me impressed!
BTW, a shortened URL for that is:
https://tinyurl.com/coffin-shaped-iceberg
Amazing find! But are you sure it’s not Moby Dick up on the surface for a blow?
PS
Of course it is a plateau iceberg. To judge from its position (SE of South Georgia) it has calved from either the Larsen or the Filchner-Ronne ice shelves.
The effect on clouds is because it is fairly far north, in waters noticeably above freezing, so of course low clouds are affected when they cross this significantly colder and slightly higher area.
Possible that there is some effect of the visible light reflecting off the ‘berg’ and heating the bottom of the clouds? Could be 15-20% open sky for reflection and at an angle. Would this be greater than the loss of upwelling LWIR from water lost by the presence of the ice?
Heat/energy applied to the bottom of a cloud has much more of an effect than any generated/applied at the top surface.
If this is not a Bat Signal viewed from on high, it’s likely a sea-surface temperature inversion possibly due to a volcanic plume, that wrings out moisture to lighten overlying cloud-cover.
It’s clearly Darth Vader’s super Star Destroyer, he’s probably searching for a Rebel base and Luke.
Halloween is coming.
Clearly it’s the anthropogenic Halloween climate anomaly.
A US Aircraft Carrier.
re: “You might simply tell us the location.”
How about YOU give us some idea where this took place such that I might have some idea of the LAND features that came into play in creating this phenomenon?
At the moment it is about 200 km almost due east of Grytviken, South Georgia. No land features involved at this time.
It would be fun if it stranded at South Georgia. Smaller iceberg often do, and one of this size would probably take a couple of years to melt.
Looks like it will soon pass north of South Georgia soon.
https://go.nasa.gov/2SorP5u
Rest in peace, Sky Dragon.
Looks like cumulus clouds above an ice sheet broken off in Antarctica.
What is wrong with you people, don’t you read WUWT, it’s the ship of fools aka Akademik Shokalskiy, on the hand could be the steam powered Chinese ice breaker in the Arctic ocean equally stupid enterprise.
Giant pile of salt with a flat top like this one. Top is bright due to sunlight, sides are shaded.
https://www.google.com/search?client=tablet-android-samsung&ei=_5nUW6TYE6W3ggeJgI7IDA&ins=false&q=giant+pile+of+salt&oq=giant+lile+of+salt&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.1.0.0i13j0i13i30j33i22i29i30l3.3429.10501..11404…1.0..3.295.3549.0j22j4……0….1…….5..0j46j0i71j35i39j46i39j0i131j46i67j0i67j46i20i264j46i131j0i20i263i264j0i20i264j46i13j33i22i10i29i30.r0VuXJkWFkQ#imgrc=aux0rLU-1nx8AM:
Anyone say a windfarm? 🙂
If Joe Bastardi’s recent observation is to be believed, then the coffin is the resting place of official US weather forecasting. In this article he calls the US GFS October 2018 forecast a “horrible bust”. The global picture was close to being the exact opposite of what was forecast:
http://notrickszone.com/2018/10/27/us-gfs-horrible-bust-october-forecast-month-ends-up-brutally-cold-across-western-hemisphere/
It’s the Aircraft Carrier USS Gerald Ford, (deck painted white during Arctic exercises for camouflage in that environment), with all aircraft stowed below deck.
My guess: Sunlight reflected by a satellite, sometimes known as a “satellite flare”. The clouds surrounding the bright area are being illuminated by something much dimmer than direct sunlight, I guess moonlight or starlight.
Now that I look at this from my home computer instead of my phone, I see that it is something under the clouds. My guess now is an iceberg or a piece of sea ice near Antarctica.
It’s the clean bit of Al Gore’s ‘carbon footprint’ magnified 50,000,000 times.
Here it is from the 24th, a bit better view.
https://go.nasa.gov/2PY9Cdz
Thanks!
Always helps to look at things from a different angle.
Here it is back in April.
https://go.nasa.gov/2SxSc9e
Here it is near its origin Jun 2017
https://go.nasa.gov/2SyRTeu