Tag: MODIS

MODIS News and Events

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Global contribution of three climate variables to the vegetation sensitivity index from 2000–2013. Temperature is in red, water availability in blue and cloudiness in green. Areas with dominant barren land and permanent ice are grey. Image credit: Sensitivity of global terrestrial ecosystems to climate variability. Alistair W. R. Seddon, Marc Macias-Fauria, Peter R. Long, David Benz & Kathy J. Willis. Nature. (2016) doi:10.1038/nature16986

MODIS data from the past 14 years is being used to generate a model that assesses how different ecosystems respond to climate variability, making it possible to compare regional sensitivity and resilience. The new index is called the vegetation sensitivity index, which makes it possible to compare vulnerability of different regions, looking at why some areas are more vulnerable than others.

The new index is unique.  Most studies about ecosystem resilience typically monitor productivity or biodiversity trends over an average climate, such as the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) or the enhanced vegetation index (EVI), which also uses MODIS data. This new index instead looks at response to climate variation.

Read the news article from Nature.

Read the journal article from Nature.

February 19, 2016
Ash Plume and Sea Ice Near Zhupanovsky – Since October, 2015 Zhupanovsky volcano in far eastern Russia has periodically been spewing ash into the atmosphere.  This MODIS image from February 13, 2016 shows an ash plume from Zhupanovsky volcano, which resulted in a code-red for air travel in the region.

Sea surface temperatures indicated that the warm "blob" has dissipated. NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using microwave and infrared multi-sensor SST data from Remote Sensing Systems.

February 12, 2016
The Demise of the Warm Blob – Ocean surface temperatures, showed a warm “blob” off the northern United State’s coast. This cell of warm ocean water in the Pacific Ocean no longer is present, having lasted from the winter of 2013 through December of 2015.

February 17, 2016
Waves Above and Below the Water – The Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired an image of wave patterns in the sky and in the water off the coast of Western Australia.

MODIS image of cloud streets over the Great Lakes.

February 11, 2016
Cloud Streets Over the Great Lakes – MODIS captured this image of cloud streets crossing the Great Lakes.

February 10, 2016
Snow in the Central U.S. – Snow from a blizzard blanketed parts of the Midwest. This image from Terra’s Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) captured the snow that remained after the clouds cleared over Nebraska.

February 6, 2016
Open- and Closed-Celled Clouds over the Pacific – Terra’s Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) captured in one image examples of two different types of convective clouds, open-celled and closed-celled.

February 5, 2016
Mount Erebus, Antarctica – Mount Erebus in Antarctica, thought to be the most southern volcano is still active. The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emissions and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured images in visible and infrared, showing not just the volcano, but also the lava lake in its interior.

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February 3, 2016
Drought in Southern Africa – Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data from Terra’s Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor are being used to track drought conditions in southern Africa, analyzing the effects of the current strong El Niño on vegetation.

Sentinel-3A, the European Space Agency (ESA) – developed Earth observing satellite successfully launched on February 16, 2016. Sentinel-3A is part of Europe’s Copernicus environment program and carries four sensors: The Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR), the Ocean Land Colour Instrument (OLCI), the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Altimeter, and the microwave radiometer.

Researchers who use Terra MODIS data are particularly interested in OLCI. OLCI images the earth similarly to MODIS on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. It measures specific ocean color, vegetation and atmospheric measurements at 300m spatial resolution and at 1270 km swath width. Sentinel 3A has a morning crossing time like Terra, making Sentinel-3A the most similar to Terra satellite currently flying. Like MODIS data, Sentinel data will be free of charge and provided worldwide.

Congratulations, ESA!

ESA: Sentinel and the Copernicus program

Walong Nature Reserve

Researchers at Michigan State University’s  Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability are combining images from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Landsat with information taken on the ground, to increase understanding of how biodiversity is changing in China’s Wolong Nature Reserve, home to the giant panda.

Read the whole article from Michigan State University.

 Global map of the average amount of time that live biomass carbon and dead organic carbon spend in carbon reservoirs around the world, in years. Credit: A. Anthony Bloom

Global map of the average amount of time that live biomass carbon and dead organic carbon spend in carbon reservoirs around the world, in years. Credit: A. Anthony Bloom

February 8, 2016

New, detailed maps of the world’s natural landscapes created using NASA satellite data could help scientists better predict the impacts of future climate change.

The maps of forests, grasslands and other productive ecosystems provide the most complete picture yet of how carbon from the atmosphere is reused and recycled by Earth’s natural ecosystems.

Scientists at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom; NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California; and Wageningen University, Netherlands, used a computer model to analyze a decade of satellite and field study data from 2001 to 2010. The existing global maps of vegetation and fire activity they studied were produced from data from NASA’s Terra, Aqua and ICESat spacecraft. The researchers then constructed maps that show where — and for how long — carbon is stored in plants, trees and soils.

The maps reveal how the biological properties of leaves, roots and wood in different natural habitats affect their ability to store carbon across the globe, and show that some ecosystems retain carbon longer than others. For example, large swaths of the dry tropics store carbon for a relatively short time due to frequent fires, while in warm, wet climates, carbon is stored longer in vegetation than in soils.

Although it is well known that Earth’s natural ecosystems absorb and process large amounts of carbon dioxide, much less is known about where the carbon is stored or how long it remains there. Improved understanding about how carbon is stored will allow researchers to more accurately predict the impacts of climate change.

Study first author Anthony Bloom, a JPL postdoctoral scientist, said: “Our findings are a major step toward using satellite imagery to decipher how carbon flows through Earth’s natural ecosystems from satellite images. These results will help us understand how Earth’s natural carbon balance will respond to human disturbances and climate change.”

Professor Mathew Williams of the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences, who led the study, said, “Recent studies have highlighted the disagreement among Earth system models in the way they represent the current global carbon cycle. “Our results constitute a useful, modern benchmark to help improve these models and the robustness of global climate projections.”

To generate values for each of the 13,000 cells on each map, a supercomputer at the Edinburgh Compute and Data Facility ran the model approximately 1.6 trillion times.

New data can be added to the maps as it becomes available. The impact of major events such as forest fires on the ability of ecosystems to store carbon can be determined within three months of their occurrence, the researchers say.

The study, published Feb. 2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

NASA uses the vantage point of space to increase our understanding of our home planet, improve lives and safeguard our future. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth’s interconnected natural systems with long-term data records. The agency freely shares this unique knowledge and works with institutions around the world to gain new insights into how our planet is changing.

For more information about NASA’s Earth science activities, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/earth

 

Media Contact

Alan Buis Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0474
Alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov

Corin Campbell
University of Edinburgh
011-44-0131-650-6382
Corin.campbell@ed.ac.uk

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