The Best Time-lapse Video From Orbit

This is incredible, a video composed of photographs taken from on board the International Space Station.  A Photographer complied and edited the pictures on by one and combined all that hard work into an impressive display.  The video shows the Aurora, night views of our cities, glows of thunderstorms, and of course the outbound starlit sky.

This video is a must see, if you can please comment about it.





Many thanks to Knate Myers (the Photographer) and Gizmodo.com that pointed out this video and to NASA for their work in outer space.

El Niño Update - July 2012

Has anyone noticed the lack of tropical storm activity in the Atlantic Ocean?
We do see storms in the Pacific, and this is because of the recent changes and effects of El Niño.

I am waiting for the map on the blog to be updated to show data past July 4th, so until then I found this image from NOAA. You can see the positive phase evident from the higher ocean temperature readings off the upper west coast of South America.

This is why there is terrible flooding in Arizona and horrific drought conditions in the mid west.  I have been searching for a long time for evidence of climate change and I have read a lot about this topic.  I had difficulty finding evidence of climate change, and  I wrote a long story about flooding SE PA.  I stated in that story that I could not find direct evidence of climate change.  Now that I have continued to search for this, I did finally notice that the El Niño and La Niña cycles have become more frequent than before.  These Oscillations used to occur every 11 years, this is no longer the case.   There are many long term natural variables to change our climate, I have to say that it looks like mans habit of living comfortably may have a partial influence on our weather.

Image from NOAA and wunderground.com

Solar Storm / CME July 13th, 2012

A CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) occurred yesterday and is currently hitting the Earth as we speak (event started at about 9 AM EST)

To monitor live data, please visit the "Space Weather" section of the blog here; http://climatedriver.blogspot.com/p/space-weather.html

This was the Space Weather forecast from NOAA / SWPC


Outlook For July 9-15
A category G1 (Minor) geomagnetic storm is expected on 9 July. A category S1 (Minor) solar radiation storm is expected on 9 and 10 July. Category R1 (Minor) radio blackouts are expected from 9-15 July.

Here is the latest solar X-Ray Image from the GOES Satellite

Courtesy; http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SWN/

What is GOES?

The GOES 12 through 15 spacecraft each carry a sophisticated Solar X-ray Imager to monitor the Sun’s X-rays for the early detection of solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and other phenomena that impact the geospace environment. This early warning is important because travelling solar disturbances affect not only the safety of humans in high-altitude missions, such as human spaceflight, but also military and commercial satellite communications. In addition, coronal mass ejections can damage long-distance electric power grids, causing extensive power blackouts. 

Here is a great YouTube video from Trudi Kay where you can see the solar flare and other information such as the position of the Aurora and impact on our geomagnetic field, etc.

AccuWeather.com - Weather Video - Catatumbo Lightning: The Largest Light Show on Earth

Watch a fantastic lightning storm in Venezuela

AccuWeather.com - Weather Video - Catatumbo Lightning: The Largest Light Show on Earth

US Forest Fires Filmed from Orbit

Please watch this NASA video from the International Space Station.  This video can give us an idea of the scale of the forest fires in Colorado.