(climate) Change Blog

Most webpage functions online, improved cloud images

2011-10-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

It's going well, better than hoped for, with the virtualization of the Windows 2000 machine on Windows 7.

All functions which worked before the server crash are back online.
Improved is the resolution of the cloud images, which are now purchased as a subscription.

This also shows in the animated weather movies, which also now feature the better clouds.
I wonder if there is a method to get the movies to play in the screensaver, again...

Migration to new server

2011-10-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

The 3 year old server which generated the "Our Planet Earth From Space" website recently began crashing once every 24 hours, give and take a few hours.

As a result I bought a newer and faster machine yesterday.

There are teething problems, as the new computer uses SATA drives, and the old server had IDE drives. As the whole webpage has been custom programmed it isn't so easy to migrate the code to the newer system.

I'm therefore using virtualization software to migrate the webpage with the minimum of fuss.
Even so, it will be several days before everything can work again as before.

In addition, recently the source for hurricane plots has stopped updating.

Please be patient, as over the next few days funcions will go online again...

Eric

Volcanic Data

2010-07-12T12:20:00.000-07:00

From: xfactor
Sent: Montag, 12. Juli 2010 00:20
To:
Subject: [Bulk] Volcanos???

Hi Erich

I just wanted to tell you that the Volcanos are not loading on the site.

If you are aware of this Great if not hope that you are still abell to put that data on the site.

Thanks for all that you do.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello,
it appears that the credentials of the contributor of my volcanic data were questioned and his website has stopped working: http://www.intlvrc.org.

Tuesday, June 08, 2010
A cautionary tale of scientific credentials
Over the weekend, the Arizona Republic ran a story questioning the scientific credentials of Robert "R.B." Trombley, who runs the International Volcano Research Centre from Apache Junction, near Phoenix. Reporter Lindsey Collom notes that Mr. Trombley was quoted as a volcano expert by CNN and the Wall Street Journal regarding the recent ash cloud from Icleand, but then goes on to say,
Pay a visit to Trombley's research center, however, and the story of Arizona's volcano expert turns into a cautionary tale about how the media's push for instant news coverage can sometimes lead to experts with questionable credentials.
The International Volcano Research Centre is located in Trombley's home, a pink trailer in Apache Junction.
Today, the Phoenix New Times took a swipe at the Republic for a laudatory article they ran on February 6, 2006, entitled, "Volcanologist in AJ is an Eruption Pro," questioning whether the Republic themselves did not do the same kind of credential check they criticize CNN and WSJ for not doing.
One item in the Republic's weekend story caught my attention. ASU geology professor Jonathan Fink, who runs the Volcano Listserv, is reported as having told his 2,000 subscribers last year, "To our knowledge, Dr. Trombley does not have training as a volcanologist, read the rest at:
http://arizonageology.blogspot.com/2010/06/cautionary-tale-of-scientific.html

I am now getting my data from the Smithsonian Institution.

Regards, E. Habich

Current Display of Fires, Virtualization of the Planet Earth Server

2009-07-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

A while ago, the University of Maryland changed its MODIS data format.

As a result the Global Fire Display and Fire Index no longer worked.
Debugging on the working server was impossible, because of its active running state, with scripts popping up every minute.

A simple backup of the server could not be installed on my laptop as a second operating system for debugging purposes.

Because of other demands on my time, it took a while before I could configure a virtual machine to run the web server on.

This has now been done and the MODIS data display is debugged.

Electric Cars?

2009-03-16T11:47:00.000-07:00

Build Your Dreams
(Or: how a battery maker invented a better battery, kept the patent and became a car maker)

In the 2007 movie "Who killed the Electric Car" the response of the established car industry to the Californian "Clean Air Law", from the 1990's was investigated.

Under that legislation car manufacturers were obliged (or, to put it less politely, forced) to produce zero-emission vehicles, to keep the air free of pollutants.

Because car pollutants do not just contribute to climate change (which is today’s concern), but also cause lung diseases in the city centres. Lung diseases were the main concern in the 1990's.

General Motors in the 1990's was still the world's largest carmaker. They decided to build an electric car called Electric Vehicle 1 (EV1), to comply with the "Clean Air Law".

To give the electric car EV1 a better power source, a number of inventors were invited to compete to improve the heavy lead-acid type batteries of old.

One inventor submitted his design of a NiCad battery to GM, to put into the new electric car and won the competition.

He was very excited about it and took out an advertisement in a newspaper, boasting that his revolutionary new NiCad batteries were going to power the new electric car of General Motors.

GM bought his battery patent and got an injunction through its lawyers to forbid the inventor to talk to the press about the new batteries ever again.

When it was time to bring the new electric car to the market, GM installed the old, heavy, lead acid batteries of old, even though they already had the new NiCad's.

Unsurprisingly, the first motoring correspondents doing driving tests of the EV1 were happy with the car’s design, it's inbuilt air condition, acceleration and handling, but they remarked that the batteries were too weak and didn't provide enough driving range.

Indeed, for the first few years the EV1 cars had problems with failing lead-acid batteries.
Hence, the first customers were not as happy with their cars, as they could have been and the electric cars reputation was tarnished.

Two years later General Motors finally did introduce the new NiCad batteries into the EV1, which doubled its range. At about the same time GM sold the NiCad patent to the oil industry giant Shell.

In the years to follow, GM would not sell their EV1 electric cars directly to its customers; instead, it was only possible to lease them from the corporation. When the lobbying of the Oil industry finally succeeded in the year 2002 and the production of electric cars was no longer mandatory, General Motors had all EV1 cars repossessed and scrapped.

A last surviving EV1 was found in autumn 2008 in Canada (it was out of US jurisdiction for repossession) and sold at auction for 500.000 $, because of its rarity.

The patent holder for NiCad batteries, Shell, subsequently licensed the use of this type of battery for any use, except automotive applications. That is the reason that even though NiCad rechargeables are used in almost any application, you cannot buy NiCad car batteries, and instead heavy lead-acids are still used.

Moreover, no electric carmaker can use NiCads in their design, limiting the choice to lead-acid (low capacity) or Lithium-Ion (high price) instead.

The Automobile Crisis

It is February 2009, and we are still in the beginning of what many indicators identify as the worst economic crisis the world has ever seen.

General Motors made a name for itself as the creator of the Hummer and other gasoline-guzzling monster trucks, which nobody wants to buy anymore, because the fuel cost has become too high. GM and Chrysler are begging for Government loans, to delay the inevitable total bankruptcy caused by a wrong strategy.

No Alternative to an electric car

It was foreseeable for a long time that oil supplies would dwindle and petrol prices soar.
The car industry for the longest time tried to appease critics by pointing to their development of expensive hydrogen fuel cells.

The car industry has totally ignored the fact that the creation, transport and storage of the hydrogen in itself is such an inefficient process, that even the use of 200 year old lead-acid battery technology is more energy effective. (Hydrogen must be created using electricity, it is only an energy storage medium and not a fuel in itself).

Old fashioned Taxation System

China is for the first time the largest car market in the world.
Sold more cars than the USA in January.

Berlin temperatures now from Tegel

2009-01-03T02:35:00.000-08:00

After many years it appears that Berlin's former city airport no longer supplies weather reports.
Tempelhof was officially closed a couple of months ago, so this was excepted, I suppose.

I have changed the Berlin reports to the Tegel Airport.

Merry Christmas on the North Pole

2008-12-24T12:51:00.000-08:00

How is Santa Claus doing these days?

There is now a movie sequence of the North Pole Sea Ice, which makes it possible to keep an eye on his home.

You can watch how the Polar Ice melts in the summer, opening up the North West Passage. In the winter the open seas quickly freeze again, making shipping impossible, except for ice breakers.

2008-11-28T12:57:00.000-08:00

When moving to the new server the free screensaver links did get broken, but they are fixed now.
The screensavers can be found on http://satellite.ehabich.info/aboutscreensaver.html.

For bug reports the bounty is a free pay screensaver of choice!

Cheers,
Eric

Links for Ave's Desktopsites for Vista

2008-11-04T12:25:00.000-08:00

Here is a list of possible active desktop backgrounds (copy the URL into the program Ave's Desktopsites):

The World Overviews
"Earth from the Sun - Distant", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_distant.htm"
"Earth from Sun - Close Up", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_sv.htm"
"Earth from Mars", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_earthmars.htm"
"Moon with background stars", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_moon.htm"
"View from the ISS Spacestation", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_iss.htm"
"Random Earth View", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_rnd.htm"
"Earth seen from the Moon", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_emoon.htm"
"Overview with markers", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_ea.htm"
"World without Fires", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_ea_nof.htm"
"Natural Earth", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_nea.htm"
"Global Temperatures", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_temp.htm"
"World Fire Map", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_globalfire.htm"

North America
"Overview Celsius", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_na.htm"
"Overview Fahrenheit", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_na_f.htm"
"Weather Forecast", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_na_fore.htm"
"3D Celsius", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_nac.htm"
"3D Fahrenheit", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_nac_f.htm"
"3D Weather Forecast", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_nac_fore.htm"

South America
"Overview", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_sam.htm"
"Weather Forecast", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_sam_fore.htm"
"3D Overview Celsius", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_sac.htm"
"3D Weather Forecast", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_sac_fore.htm"

Europe
"Overview", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_eu.htm"
"Weather Forecast", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_eu_fore.htm"
"3D Overview", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_euc.htm"
"Real Meteosat Image: fresh at 07:00,13:10,19:00 GMT", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_eu_real.htm"
"3D Weather Forecast", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_euc_fore.htm"
"Middle East", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_me.htm"
"Middle East 3D", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_mecrescent.htm"

Africa
"Overview", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_africa.htm"
"Weather Forecast", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_africa_fore.htm"
"Eastern Africa and Middle East Overview", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_me.htm"
"Middle East 3D", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_mecrescent.htm"

Asia
"Overview", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_asia.htm"
"Weather Forecast", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_asia_forecast.htm"
"3D Overview", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_asia3d.htm"
"3D Weather Forecast", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_asia3d_forecast.htm"

Australia
"Overview", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_oz.htm"
"Downunder", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_downunder.htm"
"Weather Forecast", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_oz_forecast.htm"
"3D Natural", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_au.htm"

Antarctica
"North Pole with Ice Cover", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_arctic.htm"
"South Pole with Icebergs", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_ant.htm"
"South Pole Detailed View", "http://satellite.ehabich.info/ndt_ant_three.htm"

Active Desktop Replacement for Vista and IE7

2008-10-25T07:47:00.000-07:00

Active Desktop replacement for Vista and IE7

AveDesktopSites is a small program that replaces Active Desktop. Active Desktop has not been supported since Windows Vista or Internet Explorer 7. The displayed web pages cannot be clicked on.
(Download, source: http://mpj.tomaatnet.nl/vista)

Unfortunately, the program has no installation routine. Therefore, please unpack the files in a folder and make a shortcut to it in the Startup folder. Then configure the page to display.

With the Earth Clock from Xentax.com you can make a clock widget for XP and Vista, using maps from this website. The example on the left shows the position of the ISS. You can of course also use the views (Earth From The Sun), (Antarctic) or whichever you desire.

(Download, source: http://earthclock.xentax.com)

Erupting Volcano in Chile

2008-09-28T09:54:00.000-07:00

The Chilean volcano Chaiten has been erupting since September 23, 2008. This activity has been registered on the website, when the volcano icon turned from brown to red. A little later, magma flow was detected by the Modis fire detection system, shown by a yellow spot in the middle of the volcano symbol.

On the ground, the small village next to the volcano has been evacuated and a live webcam and video stream from the chilean meteorological office shows the ongoing eruption of the volcano.

ehabich.info is back online!

2008-09-22T12:04:00.000-07:00

Well, it took 6 days, but today "Our Planet Earth From Space" is back online.
I apologize to all for this inconvenience, but a change of provider is seldom totally smooth.

Cheers, Eric

ehabich.info back online: soon

2008-09-21T11:36:00.000-07:00

I have changed the domain administrator and web space for ehabich.info.

The domain transfer will take a few days until it is completed, but then "Our Planet Earth From Space" will be back online.

Deutsche Telekom is stoopid

2008-09-17T08:54:00.000-07:00

The German Telekom has cancelled my webserver package after I cancelled my DSL subscription and phone.

I did this because I moved together with my lovely girlfriend, and for the love of Pete we did not need two phone connections at our place.

Why the Telekom also cancelled my webserver is a complete mystery, because I never gave them the order to do that.

I now have the opportunity to move to a much cheaper webhost, which I have delayed to do until now, because I did not want an interruption of my website service to you.

I hope to have the website back up again soonest.

2008-08-17T10:07:00.000-07:00

Active Volcano display is updated

After it was brought to my attention that Mt. St. Helens was falsely showing on my volcano display, even though it wasn't active for a couple of months, I had to change the data source, away from the Smithsonian Institution.

My data now are from the International Volcano Research Centre, at Apache Junction, Arizona. I thank R. B. Trombley,Ph.D. and his associates for permission to use the data.

Active volcanoes are shown as brown triangles, and erupting volcanos are shown in red. The name of the volcano is printed next to the symbol in orange. It is not unusual to see quake activity next to a volcano. Inside the triangles fires may be observed, which are lava flows.

Scale of volcanic acitivities:
Vulcano ist restless; Eruption is possible.
(Volcano Alert Level 1)

Volcano is erupting or eruptions are eminent.
(Volcano Alert Level 2-4)

Significant eruptions are underway, or explosive eruptions are expected at any time. (Volcano Alert Level 5).

Data from: http://www.intlvrc.org/alerts.htm
Update interval: twice daily.

Home Energy Meters

2008-07-13T09:18:00.000-07:00

As a method to save on home electricity bills, as well as reducing your carbon footprint (thus helping to save the planet) I have discovered "home energy meters".

Home energy meters measure the electricity consumption at the main electricity meter and transmit the result to a wireless unit, which can be in your kitchen, living- or bedroom.

Thus, if your kids forgot to turn of the TV and Wii in your basement, you know about it and can tell them to turn it off, without first trudging into the basement yourself.

You also know at any time how high your electric bill will be and get warnings when the energy usage is especially high.

I have ordered the Efergy energy meter and I expect it to arrive in the next week here in Germany. I got my unit from here: home-energy-meters

Piri Reis inspired satellite view of Earth

2008-06-23T09:43:00.000-07:00

Here is a bonus for Piri Reis map and "10.000 BC" fans: the Piri Reis map.

My server is presently generating the first issues of this Earth view in azimuthal projection.

http://www.ehabich.info/images/synchro/ep.jpeg

Piri Reis Map

2008-04-17T12:33:00.000-07:00

Not much has been happening the last few months. The server has been running smoothly.
Recently watched "10.000 B.C.".

This gave me the idea of composing a modern analogue of that old map. Presently I'm a bit stumped, on how to realize the necessary spherical distortion.

Extended Server Outage

2008-01-29T10:43:00.000-08:00

I apologize to all for the complete disappearance of the website for over 24 hours. It was caused by my managed server being "managed" by a third party, to include an important "security" update. Apparently the managers forgot to restore the backup, or they forgot to plug the server back in.

Whatever the cause, the website is almost back to normal, except that the domain opefs.com does not yet connect, which is just a small challenge. Most business is transacted via ehabich.info.

Increased lossless resolution
The image for the Natural Earth Map is now a PNG graphics file.
Some old distributions of Internet Explorer may not be able to display PNG files, in which case an upgrade to a later distro of IE can help.

Vista Compatability
All screensavers are compatible with Vista. Please look on the screensaver download page.

Portable Network Graphics

2008-01-18T04:43:00.000-08:00

As the speed of internet connections keeps increasing, it is becoming feasible to use higher quality graphics. The first .PNG map on this site "Our Planet Earth From Space" is the Natural Earth View. The file size increases from approx. 220kb to 1.4mb, giving richer colors, and no more compression artifacts. If the image format causes trouble, drop me a line...

Color correction

2007-12-26T10:33:00.000-08:00

I made a cosmetic change to the display of the maps.
The standard "NASA Blue Marble Next Generation" maps have very dark oceans, as seen on the left.

You may have grown used to the dark, almost black, oceans, but it's not really the way the Earth looks. The new blue shade is shown below the old picture.

Satellite Look Up Tool is repaired
NASA changed the way in which its Spacecraft Master Catalogue is queried. The changes have been incorporated and the relevant pages are fixed.

Corrected error in the Global Warming index

2007-12-02T10:40:00.000-08:00

There was a script error, which calculated the global warming wrong.
The now corrected script shows an above average temperature of +1.78 Celsius at the beginning of December, which is still a lot, but not as roastingly hot as the +11 something Celsius ...

High temperatures at the beginning of December

2007-12-01T14:56:00.000-08:00

The first December shows a Global Warming of 11.46 Celsius. It must be remembered that this means that the average temperature for the whole month of December is 11.46 C above average. The temperature will hopefully progressively fall until the end of December, because the planet is entering the winter season.

Exactly why this should be so, is not entirely clear to me, either. I suspect that there is more landmass in the northern half of the Earth than in the South. Or because there are more weather stations in the north to record the temperature.

Sea Ice

2007-10-16T14:15:00.000-07:00

The extent of the Arctic ice field can be observed on the large North Pole map. That map can be opened by clicking on the Polar region.

If polar bear Knut's cousins can still tread safely on ice and in which regions their habitats are threatened by melting pack ice, can be gauged with the help of the color scale.

The origin of the sea ice data is a satellite based passive microwave sensor. The Polar Ice Team of NOAA uses a NASA formula to derive their measurements.
The formula works by comparing the reflective properties of the various types of ice. Strong winds and heavy rains can falsify the data.
According to Russ Page (of the Anchorage WSFO) this happened for instance on 8 January 1997, when heavy 60 knot winds pounded the Bering Sea. In summer, sometimes puddles of water on the ice can lead to underestimating the ice thickness.
Data source : http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/seaice/

The North West Passage is shut!

2007-09-23T08:10:00.001-07:00

Whilst these news possible are not featured as prominently in the media, after only a week of being passable, the North West passage is frozen closed again.

For fairness I thought I should give these headlines as much space, as the news of its opening. It's still going to be a long time before regular shipping will be able to take a shortcut over the North Pole.

It is still a warning however. The introduction of the "Arctic Screensaver" will make it possible for everyone to keep a close watch on what's happening in the far North, without media bias.

Improved Zoomability of Natural Earth Map
Since a few weeks it's possible to click the Earth Moon image on the start page to zoom to the "Natural Earth Map". Further zooming now takes you straight to the full screen continental maps.

The North West Passage is open!

2007-09-16T12:21:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of the last century many explorers left their lives in the Arctic regions, searching for a way around the Northpole, to find a shorter way to travel to Asia by boat.

The changing climate has now opened this fabled sea route for the first time in human memory. Container ships will be able to get even faster and cheaper from and to the Far East and China.

To keep up with developments in the increasing important developments in the Arctic region i spent today tweaking the Sea Ice image from MMAB Sea Ice Analysis Page for use on my maps.

The full map can be seen here. I've not had time yet to incorporate the map into the site further.

No current fire data from Modis

2007-09-10T14:17:00.000-07:00

There are problems with the Terra and Aqua L0 data feed from MODIS Rapid Response for the Fire data. This means that the fire data displayed on my website are out-of-date!
The last update happened on 7. September, 14:30 GMT.

Naturally, as soon as the proplem is fixed, the data will update again.

Testing the Climate Change Index

2007-09-03T16:11:00.001-07:00

To show that my Climate Change Index is not a completely without value, I give a few examples of its merit:

COMPARISON WITH OFFICIAL CLIMATE CHANGE DATA
"The global average air temperature near the Earth's surface rose 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the last 100 years." source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

This measurement was arrived at in the report of the IPCC, using error corrected data of tens of thousands of weather stations over 100 years.

For comparison, here are the latest available full month data from my calculations and sampling of 130 stations. (Older data are archived in DivX movie format and can be downloaded from here: http://stage6.divx.com/Climate-Change).
My results show a temperature rise of +0.71 to +0.73°C.

The difference to the official value of 0.74° Celsius is 1% to 3%, a mean difference of 2%, which I think is amazingly close.

Climate Change Index

2007-09-02T10:18:00.000-07:00

(Image 1)The display on the left is visible on almost every map of this website. The current average global temperature is calculated from averaging the temperatures of approx. 130 weather stations. The data for this are from http://weather.noaa.gov/.

The Climate Change Index (+1.6° Celsius) is calculated from the deviation of the longterm average temperature of the 130 weather stations. It is thought that even though this is only a small random sample of global weather stations, it will give a general idea of global temperature trends.

(Image 2 ) We all have heard that supposedly the glaciers in Greenland are melting, because of global warming. Is that true? Here we see the temperature at Thule Airforce Base in Greenland on the 2. Sept. 2007, it is 3°Celsius. There is a second set of figures, the climate change indicator: +5.3. 5.3° Celsius was on September 2nd the temperature deviation from the norm. The norm is the "many years average" for September for Thule. As you can see here, the average September temperature in Thule between the years 1946 and 1990 was -1.8° Celsius.

Then you ask, why does the deviation from the norm not show this: "+4.8"
(as -1.8°Celsius to 3°Celsius equal +4.8°Celsius) ?

(Image 3 )The picture on the left shows the temperature at 11 GMT the day before. It was 4°C and the climate change indicator shows a deviation which is to be expected:
(as -1.8°Celsius to 4 °Celsius equals +5.8°Celsius).

The reason for the differing values is, that the fluctuating daily temperatures are recorded every hour and the running average is calculated. The running average is then compared to the monthly average, which then is displayed as the climate change indicator.

Like this we always get a fairly accurate approximation of the change from the monthly average. However, as the part month averages are compared to the whole monthly average, it does mean that the climate change values get more accurate towards the end of the month. At the beginning of the month there can be strong fluctuations.

From 1. September to 30. September for instance, we expect a decreasing temperature in the northern hemisphere, which means that the values of the climate change indicator should decrease until the end of the month. The values will be exactly correct on the 30. September at midnight, for the place indicated. The results before then are neither mathematically nor climatologically quite correct, but it is hoped that they can help to detect temperature trends.

(Image 4) There can also be instances when the climate change indicator shows negative values (global cooling). In any case, when the temperature deviation from the norm is more than 2° Celsius positive or negative, then the fontsize increases and the color changes to indicate hot or cold spots. The hot-/coldspots are highlighted only from the second day of a new month, to have a minimum sample of 24 hours.

Update interval of these data on the webpages: every 60 minutes.

Italian fires show no sign of abating

2007-08-30T01:22:00.001-07:00

In this Meteosat image from the 30. August 2007 thick smoke can still be seen drifting southwesterly from the fires along the Italian Campania.

After a long fight, the fires in Italy are still not under control. Yesterday the fires entered the Park of the Villa Ada in Rome, the nature preserve Park Veio and they continue to burn wild in many parts of the South.

In this MODIS image the various fires covering Italy are shown as red dots.

Live Lightning data for Europe

2007-08-29T18:00:00.000-07:00

Without further ado I've added live lightning data for Europe. This would not have been possible without the help of the European Blitzortungs community. On their website you find more detailed information, cool Yahoo gadgets to warn you of nearing thunderstorms and KML files to load into your Google Earth, for near real-time lightning data (utilities).

The lightning data can not be used for the protection of life or property. It is only useable for entertainment...

Automated displays of unusual temperature

2007-08-26T20:42:00.000-07:00

The temperatures display has been slightly altered. I'm not sure if I'm going to leave it like this:
when the temperature at a place is above 2° Celsius of the monthly average, then the place mark is highlighted with a larger font, and a more reddish color.

If the temperature is below 2° Celsius of the monthly average, then the place mark is also highlighted with a larger font, but has a blueish color.

The figure of 2° Celsius is maybe arbitrary, but a difference of 2°C from the monthly average can mean a lot. As it happens, there are almost no significant deviations from the average temperature in the US, South-America, Australia or Africa this month. Eastern and Northern Europe (incl. Greenland) and Mogolia are showing extremely high temperatures. As is Japan.

New screensaver of Arabian Peninsula

2007-08-26T12:39:00.000-07:00

A Screensaver with a start view of the Arabian Peninsula is now online. Includes Active Desktop wallpaper on this page.

Upside down map of Australia

2007-08-26T12:10:00.000-07:00

A few years ago someone requested an upside-down map of Australia. The view is now available as free screen saver and active desktop wallpaper. Below the equator everything is upside down!

North is South, and South is North.

European fires burn deadly trail in south

2007-08-24T12:15:00.000-07:00

Today the news were filled with horror stories of gruesome fires in Europe. So have on the Greek island of Pellopone 15 people killed, and in Sicily, were someone keeps setting fire to the trees near the coastline, so that they can do property development there, 11 people have been killed altogether.

What I wonder about, were are the fires that are not in the news: aren't there any? The first image here is Europe, and you'll be able to find Italy and Greece. See how tiny those fires are against the fires in the Ukraine? There must be a lot of property development going on. After all, they need to play catch-up.

Now lets compare this with the fires in the rain forest, or the small fires in Africa, which are not mentioned.

If those fires in the tourist spots of Europe are terrible, how much worse must it be for those people in Brazil or Africa? My computer is counting now record numbers of active fires, at one stage approaching 30,000.

It can't be good for the climate either. Think of the millions of tons of CO² and sulphuric acid, etc. released into the atmosphere. I read someplace that a certain level of forest fires is essential for the survival of the forest. But how much is too much, and how much is necessary?

If forests globally are more or less similar, being composed of trees, and leaves and forest stuff, then it is not understandable how forests in Europe or the USA can survive so well. Because we burn our forests only very seldom, as you can see on those maps... Earth Fire Map (updated every 3 hours).
(All shown images are from today).

Rainforest loss shocks Brazil 2005
Will Amazon drought worsen in '2007? ( from May '07)
A rainforest in danger (Congo 2007)

2007-08-22T16:08:00.001-07:00

############## Mailing list update #############
New change blog is online and linked in
The website and all other bits (screen savers, desktops) has been updated, to link to this new blog. The old blog was a blog only by name, whereas this one here has really all the advantages of a real blog, especially a way for my visitors to leave feedback.

More remarks on global fires and the fire display
I will be reducing the size of the fire icons so that it doesn't quite look like whole continents are totally ablaze. Instead I'll try to adjust the icon colours, to show different fire temperatures. I don't think it will make much difference.

I have calculated that with about 20,000 fires worldwide, each being larger than 50m²,
an area of at least 1x1 kilometers (1 km²) is burning. That doesn't sound that bad at first. After all, we are talking about a whole world here, and not Tom's garden.

However, that 1x1 kilometer square is burning constantly. You know from a fire that it doesn't stay in one place, but that it feeds on the vegetation and moves constantly. It is difficult to imagine a 1 by 1 kilometer large flame, which permanently needs new fuel to keep burning. The attrition rate of the global fires must be awesome. I will be asking UMD how much area of forest a typical fire consumes in a day.

2007-08-22T11:36:00.000-07:00

A note on the restored fire data feed
The "Fire Information for Resource Management System", for short FIRMS, from the University of Michigan is the source of my fire data. On the website of FIRMS everyone can double check my visualization results against the results of the experts: http://maps.geog.umd.edu/firms/maps.asp. They even have a KML feed, so that you can watch the fires in Google Earth.

Server upgrade
To keep up with the increased workload on the server, which can be caused a large number of fires, the RAM capacity has been doubled, to 1Gigabyte.

Donations
Another one of my servers is rented and costs approx. 100 Dollar monthly. If someone wishes to help me financially towards this and other expenses (electricity, RAM, etc): Donations

Invitation for Venture Capital or Job offers
The operation of websites is not my full time job.
In my day job I work as a doorman/phone operator/receptionist/clerk.

Therefore either venture capital to develop this website on a full-time basis, possibly as part of an environmental group or organization, or other job offers would be welcome. I am a self-taught generalist in the computer world who programs in Basic, and gets the job done with it.

RSS feed of the Climate Change Channel
Subscribe to the "Climate Change Channel" RSS feed here:
Features (written) commentary, exclusive CGI animation of weather, nature and climate related issues.

Tuesday, 21. August 2007
Hurricane Dean
Dean weakens again after having been a major storm of category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale, with windspeeds exceeding 269km/h, 167mph. It has hit the small town of Majahual in Mexico, which is in a sparsely populated area. Hurricane Dean swept earlier this week over Jamaica and the Caymans, causing greatest havoc and about 10 deaths.

Fires are coming back, or optionally, not
After being offline for two days, the fire data are streaming in again. If you would like a Whole Earth screensaver or background without fire display on a permanent basis, then check out the download sections for the screensavers or active desktops. There are fire-free versions to download.

Asia and Distant Earth desktops
A coding error which prevented the downloading of these backgrounds has been corrected.

Climate Change Channel
Longterm observervations from this site are now on the stage6 Climate Change Channel:

Click the banner to visit there.

New Free WideScreen Savers available
It appears I forgot to mention on this page that there are now screensavers available for screens with 16:9 aspect ratios, and with resolutions of over 1024x768 pixels! Visit this page for the new free screensavers.

Sunday, 19. August 2007
Latest news: no fires now
Now, it wasn't that long ago, that I complained about the large number of fires. That complaint is superflous now, as there are almost no fires shown anywhere. The cause is presumably an error with the satellite feed, which is beyond my control. I apologize anyways.

Saturday, 18. August 2007
"Huge" DivX Movies now online
Since about 6 months I'm sitting on large webcam movies, 50 - 130mb in size. How to distribute them online in high quality (1024x768px), without incurring huge bandwidth costs?

The solution is the online DivX community "Stage 6". To watch the animations, please download first the latest DivX webplayer from the DivX site: DivX Web Player 1.4.0 Beta 2.

Then visit my video page on Stage 6: http://stage6.divx.com/Climate-Change/videos/
A couple of animations is now online, each about 5 minutes in length. The movies will stream with a DSL connection, so you don't need to wait for the download, and you can watch them in a browser window on Windows or Mac (or download them to your harddrive).

Wednesday, 15. August 2007
There is a problem with the huge number of fires
The number of global fires is now over 26.000. My server is having problems with this, because the position of each fire must be computed, to be displayed at the correct place. This is not so bad as the problems, which our Earth is experiencing, because of this. But you may experience delays in the update of the maps from my site. As a race we will feel the effects of these fires a little bit later, of course. It is only the question if the global dimming from the smoke will balance the effects of the global warming, from the release of carbon dioxide through the fires???

Quake Alerts fixed
They work now as they should.

16. July 2007
Quake Alerts still malfunctioned
The heavy quake in Japan today gave me a chance to rework the still malfunctioning "Quake-Alerts". I don't know, how the spelling error crept into the script. But it has been fixed, and I will hope that we don't need the quake alerts again for some time. Latest figures spoke of six fatalities in Japan, caused by the quakes.

14. June 2007
Quake Alerts malfunction
Thankfully there aren't too many earthquakes of strength 6 or above. That is the treshold for spoken quake alerts, normally. But a bug prevented this at the recent Guatemala quake from working. I've reworked the program code, and hopefully the quake alerts will be working again, at the next heavy quake.

12. June 2007
High Res Cloud cover over Asai and Australia restored
Over the weekend, until today, no high-res clouds were available for the mentioned region. Instead I switched to a low-res backup service, to provide at least some cloud coverage.

Fire Display changed back to the old method (24 hour fires)
There was a problem with the FTP server, which has now been fixed. Because I now have access to the raw fire data again I prefer to return to the old display format. I suppose it was better to have some fire display, than none at all. Also it is handy to have a backup script, and an alternative method to retrieve data, ready to go.

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