The Map Room

Whenever I see a weather forecast, it’s usually accompanied by normal temperatures for the day. In NOAA’s case, that normal is calculated from a 30-year average, updated every decade. NOAA just updated those norms, Dan Satterfield reports, and as you might expect, things are a bit warmer: “Climate change is expected to be stronger in northern areas of North America and that trend continues to show up. It is also expected to be more noticeable at night and in winter and that too shows up clearly,” Dan says. Here’s a PDF of the NOAA briefing deck explaining the update, from which the map above is taken: the map shows the increase in degrees Fahrenheit between the 1971-2000 and 1981-2010 normal minimum temperatures for January. Via MAPS-L.

The European Space Agency has released a map of sea ice thickness in the Arctic based on observations by the CryoSat-2 satellite. “CryoSat measures the height of the sea ice above the water line, known as the freeboard, to calculate the thickness. The measurements used to generate this first map of the Arctic were from January and February 2011, as the ice approaches its annual maximum. The data are exceptionally detailed and considerably better than the mission’s specification. They even show lineations in the central Arctic that reflect the ice’s response to wind stress.” There’s also a map of Antarctic ice, but it’s preliminary.

Google Maps Mania links to NOAA’s collection of aerial tornado damage imagery from April and May, and has assembled a gallery of before-and-after images of the tornado damage (via).

Animations generated from GOES-13 satellite imagery of the supercell thunderstorms from the past week, including the storm that generated the tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri on May 22: here and here. Via Phil Plait.

It’s amazing how clear the damage from tornadoes appears in satellite imagery. Above, an ASTER visible-infrared image of a tornado’s path near Tuscaloosa, Alabama: “In the picture, captured just days after the storm, pink represents vegetation and aqua is the absence of vegetation. The tornado ripped up everything in its path, scouring the Earth’s surface with its terrible force. The ‘tearing up’ of vegetation makes the tornado’s track stand out as a wide swath of aqua.” NASA’s Earth Observatory also has a set of satellite photos of the tornado tracks.

Previously: Southeast U.S. Tornado Maps and Images.

At the end of last month, the New York Times published a map called Where to Live to Avoid a Natural Disaster, measuring the risk to 379 U.S. metro areas from hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes. Matt Rosenberg doesn’t like…  •  Continue reading this entry.

NASA’s Earth Observatory has satellite images and animations of the weather system that spawned so many tornadoes this week. Google Maps’s collection of tornado maps and images. The Wall Street Journal’s map of storm reports. Another map of storm…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Nearly 300 people were killed in storms and ensuing tornadoes across the southern U.S. on Wednesday. To provide some context, the New York Times maps annual deaths by tornado in the United States since 1950….  •  Continue reading this entry.

NASA Earth Observatory has released maps showing the decline of atmospheric ozone levels in the Arctic to what is approaching “the lowest levels in the modern instrumental era”: “These maps of ozone concentrations over the Arctic come from the…  •  Continue reading this entry.

An eerily beautiful MODIS image of “cloud streets” across New England and the Maritimes from January 24, 2011. For another pretty image of winter from space, see this view of snow on the Korean peninsula. Previously: The Snowpocalypse from…  •  Continue reading this entry.

NASA Earth Observatory has a map showing the record melt of Greenland’s ice cap in 2010, during which the melt started earlier and lasted longer than usual. “This image was assembled from microwave data from the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Researchers from the University of Sheffield geography department have created maps showing the pattern and rate of retreat of the British ice sheet during the last Ice Age. From the press release: The unique maps record the pattern and…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Interesting animation from NASA showing three elements of the water cycle on a global scale. “The three animations of atmospheric phenomena were created using data from the GEOS-5 atmospheric model on the cubed-sphere, run at 14-km global resolution for…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Here’s a look at today’s snowstorm that hit much of North America, taken at 1445 UTC by one of NASA’s GOES satellites. Credit: NOAA/NASA GOES Project. NASA’s Earth Observatory has more views of this weather system, including this animation…  •  Continue reading this entry.

NASA’s Earth Observatory: “This image shows rainfall amounts over California from December 18 to 20, 2010. The heaviest rainfall — more than 200 millimeters or 7.8 inches — appears in dark blue.”…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A series of maps on NASA’s Earth Observatory site, covering every decade since the 1880s, shows how much the world’s temperatures have deviated from the reference period of 1951-1980. Above is the map for 2000 to 2009….  •  Continue reading this entry.

To illustrate the impact of a four-degree rise in global temperatures and a four-metre rise in sea levels, Practical Action has released a London tube map showing which stations would be underwater. Via io9 and Londonist; thanks also to…  •  Continue reading this entry.

NASA Earth Observatory has a map of hurricane tracks, rainfall and storm intensity for the 2010 season. “This image shows the paths taken by the storms and the rainfall associated with each storm throughout the season. The rainfall measurements…  •  Continue reading this entry.

io9 has produced a map of the world’s natural disaster hot zones. “Most of the disasters we’ve highlighted here are caused by nature, and only occasionally helped along by humans. … How did we decide where disaster hot zones…  •  Continue reading this entry.

This image maps sulphur dioxide emissions from the erupting Mount Merapi volcano in Indonesia: “This image shows concentrations of sulfur dioxide on November 4–8, 2010, as observed by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA’s Aura spacecraft. Sulfur dioxide…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Oh, so that’s what hit us. This image of the “weather bomb” that surprised the U.S. Midwest and much of central and western Canada — it knocked out our power a couple of times earlier this week — was…  •  Continue reading this entry.

This image of sea ice at the North Pole is not a photo. It’s compiled from microwave data gathered by the Aqua satellite’s AMSR-E microwave sensor. “Ice emits more microwave radiation than water, making regions of the ocean with…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Macworld has a roundup of hurricane tracking apps for the iPhone and iPad — after all, it’s not like there won’t be any more of them after Earl….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Check out this image taken yesterday by Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite GOES-13 of Hurricane Danielle (top), Hurricane Earl (lower left) and a developing tropical depression (now Tropical Storm Fiona). Here’s one from this morning, more up to date but…  •  Continue reading this entry.

These dramatic Landsat 5 images show a portion of southern Pakistan before and after the second wave of flooding hit; the images were taken only three days apart. More satellite images of the flooding in Pakistan here. Via Daily…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A map based on temperature records assembled by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies “shows global surface temperature anomalies for May 2010 compared to average temperatures for the same time of year from 1951 to 1980. Above-normal temperatures appear…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Reinsurance company Munich Re reports on losses due to natural disasters in 2009; their maps (PDF) reveal, among other things, the high level of insurance losses due to severe weather in the U.S., and the impact of climate change….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Altitude on maps is given using sea level as a baseline. But sea level is not a constant, NASA/JPL oceanographer Josh Willis explains: “Even though it’s sometimes convenient to think of the ocean as a great big bathtub, where turning…  •  Continue reading this entry.

It’s not just Europe: NASA’s Earth Observatory provides the same data mapped to a polar projection of the entire northern hemisphere: “This image illustrates how cold December was compared to the average of temperatures recorded in December between 2000…  •  Continue reading this entry.

It’s been awfully cold in Europe this month, and this map shows just how much colder than normal it’s been, based on measurements taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite between December 11 and…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The first full-disk thermal infrared image of the Earth from the GOES 14 geostationary satellite, taken on August 17, shows Hurricane Bill forming in the Atlantic. In this image, the hotter a surface, the darker it appears; from the…  •  Continue reading this entry.

iPhone Central reviews a trio of weather radar map applications for the iPhone and iPod touch: Radar in Motion, RadarScope (“the heavyweight here”; pictured at right) and Weather Radar (“the weakest of the trio of offerings discussed here”). RadarScope…  •  Continue reading this entry.

I’m a huge fan of The Big Picture; today’s entry features some “standout photographs” from NASA’s Earth Observatory site, which I’ve mentioned before but which bears mentioning again. Above, volcanic rock in Harrat Khaybar in Saudi Arabia, taken by…  •  Continue reading this entry.

On a day like today, with a whole pile of snow waiting outside for me to shovel, Leszek’s link to the National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center, which at this time of year provides all kinds of snow-related information,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Researchers from the University of South Carolina, Columbia, have mapped mortality from natural hazards in the United States; using data from 1970 to 2004, their research showed that “chronic” natural hazards like severe seasonal weather and heat waves were…  •  Continue reading this entry.

With even more hurricanes on the way, Google has added a “Hurricane Season 2008” folder to Google Earth. Previously: Post-Gustav Imagery; Mapping Hurricane Gustav….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Google LatLong points to NOAA aerial imagery taken after the passage of Hurricane Gustav; the imagery has also been processed into a KML file for use in Google Earth, which would allow for some useful before/after comparisons. (The entry also…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Hurricane Gustav Tracking Maps Firstcoastnews.com FLHurricane.com IbisEye MIBAZAAR MSNBC StormAdvisory (click on Gustav) Wundermap Some are better than others; IbisEye, MSNBC and Wundermap are standouts. Via Anything Geospatial, Google Maps Mania, Kottke and La Cartoteca. Hurricane Gustav in Google Earth…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Turkish researchers are applying haptics to weather maps, allowing map users to “feel” climate data represented on the map, the New Scientist reported last March: The system converts climate data into forces that a person can feel using a haptic…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A NASA satellite, the Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason-2, primarily measures the height of the ocean surface with a radar altimeter. It also has a sensor to measure atmospheric moisture; this map represents water vapour in the atmosphere measured…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Web comic xkcd imagines upcoming hurricanes. Via Cartophilia….  •  Continue reading this entry.

NOAA now has an online tool that maps historical hurricane tracks. You can also compare storm tracks against coastal population data. Data are available for storms as far back as the mid-19th century, and they’re exportable: tracks are also downloadable…  •  Continue reading this entry.

This map shows the projected climate of Europe in 2071, but it does so in a rather confusing way: it relocates the cities to reflect what present-day locations match their projected climates. So, for example, London, Paris, Stockholm and…  •  Continue reading this entry.

An interesting Flash-based map of places affected by “extreme flood events” since 1985 (with incomplete or missing data from some years) from the Dartmouth Flood Observatory, which tracks such things. Via Vector One….  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Journal Times of Racine, Wisconsin has a profile of University of South Carolina geography professor Kristin Dow, one of the co-authors of The Atlas of Climate Change: Mapping the World’s Greatest Challenge. She grew up in Racine, so…  •  Continue reading this entry.

ACME Mapper started out as a front end for TerraServer; it’s now a Google Maps mashup that adds TerraServer data (including USGS topo maps) and NEXRAD weather radar data as additional layers — though these added layers are U.S.-only. Via…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Environment Canada’s Weather Office says they’ve improved the radar section of their web site. “The improvements include: the provision of extra geographical references, easier navigation from one local radar site to another, and a ‘how to use’ section.” Overlays…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Earth Observatory’s weekly mailing is a good way to discover some of the latest satellite imagery, both true- and false-colour; this past week, there was this startling look at ocean temperatures in the hurricane zone. Yellow and up are…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Sailwx.info’s real-time map of ship locations (based on data from the Voluntary Observing Ships program) has been getting a lot of play on the web lately — I first saw it on La Cartoteca — but the site has a…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Ooo. A map of lightning strikes based on NASA satellite data (more on which here). Via BLDGBLOG. Update, June 20: Frank has made a Google Earth layer out of this map….  •  Continue reading this entry.

NASA’s new CloudSat satellite takes cross-section images of cloud interiors, allowing researchers to see cloud formations in 3D. The images are essentially transects rather than maps, but can supplement and inform weather-related satellite imagery the same way as ground…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Real-time data (or at least near real-time data) exists in the online mapping world, just not the real-time satellite and aerial imagery that uninformed people get exercised about — take traffic congestion data, for example. Weather data is another possibility…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A few links to maps on environmental (and related) subjects. A project by Dutch scientists to measure European air pollution using NASA’s Aura satellite. Some pages in Dutch. Via Treehugger. The Center for Sustainability and the Global Enviroment has a…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Here we go again. Google Earth Blog has a collection of downloadable automated storm tracking tools (KMZ file). Google Maps Mania points to a couple of Google Maps based storm trackers. Spatially Adjusted links to ESRI’s existing hurricane viewer and…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Cute little Canadian province Prince Edward Island has released an online wind atlas, the CBC reports. The atlas, in PDF and ALOV-based interactive versions, maps potential wind energy — i.e., potential locations for wind turbines. See previous entry: Wind Energy…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Kathryn Cramer reports that new Rita overlays for Google Earth based on updated NOAA imagery are now available. Meanwhile, Wired carries an AP story about mapping the storm surge from Katrina: surveyors are trying to create an atlas of the…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Kathryn Cramer reports that the first post-Hurricane Rita images from the areas hardest hit by the storm have been posted by NOAA. As was the case with Katrina, the interface — starting with a base map index page — is…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Fantastic multidimensional satellite imagery of Hurricane Rita from NOAA; via Spatially Adjusted. Also, you can now track Hurricane Rita with Virtual Earth; via Scoble. On an organizational note, I’ve combined entries about Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita into a new…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Directions has compiled a page of links to U.S. government maps related to Hurricane Rita; this will be updated as new information becomes available, they say. James Fee, in re ESRI helping various government agencies: “It seems that everyone has…  •  Continue reading this entry.

There are several resources for keeping tabs on the next volley of tropical storms to hit the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean. NOAA’s Storm Tracker page for Rita and Philippe has tracking maps and satellite photos. Google Earth…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Glenn of GISuser.com has been collecting photos, maps and other graphics related to hurricanes — Katrina in particular, naturally — on his Flickr account. Late to the party, but Microsoft has put in a solid, if buggy effort with…  •  Continue reading this entry.

It’s been a few days since I last posted on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Here are a few more links. Apologies for letting them accumulate. ESRI’s Hurricane Katrina Disaster Viewer is, according to ESRI’s Lisa Kensok, who submitted this…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Forbes reports that FEMA’s outdated flood maps meant that many people in Hurricane Katrina’s path didn’t have flood insurance because, according to those maps, they weren’t in a flood plain and didn’t need it. More generally on inaccurate flood maps…  •  Continue reading this entry.

More flood maps of New Orleans (see this morning’s entry). Kathryn Cramer, whose blog has turned into an immense resource for Hurricane Katrina information, links to a Google Maps hack that shows the approximate water depth in flooded areas; because…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Over on GeoCarta, Roger goes beyond the latest satellite and aerial photography of New Orleans (which is what’s getting the lion’s share of attention); he looks at NOAA’s survey of the damage to the Mississippi River shipping channel and has…  •  Continue reading this entry.

In addition to the Forbes article I mentioned yesterday, both the BBC and New York Times (free registration required) cover the use of Google Maps and Earth by ordinary users to collect and distribute information about the disaster — i.e.,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

I’ve been getting e-mail from people asking about the state of various locations in and around New Orleans and other areas hit by Hurricane Katrina. I’m not the best person to answer such questions — I’m just someone from small-town…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Orbimage’s satellite photos of New Orleans post-Katrina, here and here, are in black and white; as a result, the detail is much sharper and the flooded parts of the city are much more visible, as the example above (courtesy…  •  Continue reading this entry.

I’ve been reorganizing my categories a bit; my Hurricane Katrina entries now have their own category. More satellite imagery: Before and after satellite images from GlobalSecurity.org. Landsat’s before and after images seem to have more detail than the others. NASA…  •  Continue reading this entry.

(Updated) More satellite imagery from the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina is being made available. Space Imaging’s Image Gallery has images of New Orleans before Katrina and Mobile, Alabama after Katrina (via Cartography). Digital Globe’s Hurricane Katrina Media Gallery has…  •  Continue reading this entry.

(Updated) Susan Kitchens has compiled and sent along an animated image (680-KB animated GIF) that shows the New Orleans area before and after Hurricane Katrina passed through; per her suggestion, I’m hosting it on my server. See previous entries: Hurricane…  •  Continue reading this entry.

(Many updates) Watch Hurricane Katrina’s path via satellite imagery or radar; both are NOAA pages and both require Java. Via Paulo. Kathryn Cramer has been collecting aerial images of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, along with some…  •  Continue reading this entry.

In other natural disaster news, Vector One has linked to ESA satellite imagery of the Portuguese wildfires and floods in Austria, Switzerland and Germany….  •  Continue reading this entry.

(Many updates) I’ve been looking for maps and satellite imagery of Hurricane Katrina. So far, I’ve found this page from the National Hurricane Center and this page (a popup) from the NOAA Storm Tracker site, which has many of the…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The BBC recently overhauled the graphics for its weather maps, and that hasn’t gone over very well. Noel Jenkins sent in a link to his take on the affair. Essentially, people are complaining that the BBC has “dumbed down” the…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Further to my previous post on wind atlases, two Stanford University researchers have compiled a global wind map that charts wind energy potential worldwide. Both Wired News and WorldChanging have details and copies of the map….  •  Continue reading this entry.

A wind energy atlas maps wind energy potential: it shows the average velocity and power of a given area, which is useful for people or companies interested in setting up wind generators. Here are the Canadian Wind Energy Atlas and…  •  Continue reading this entry.

I’ve seen pollen forecasts on weather channels, mapping allergens for allergy sufferers, and of course there are the golf and ski forecasts, but the British Weather Channel’s forecasts for aches and pains and seasonal affective disorder are new to me….  •  Continue reading this entry.