July, 2015 | Mallemaroking

Mark Brandon • July 30, 2015

Yet more beautiful MODIS imagery showing some wonderful patterns in a plankton bloom in the Barents Sea.

Plankton patterns in the Barents Sea

The screen grab is from the 250m resolution imagery, and the whole arctic panel shows just where the bloom is located.

The Arctic on 29 July 2015 in MODIS imagery

This particular region seems to show plankton blooms regularly in the MODIS imagery and the Wikipedia page has a similar (but not as nice) image dated summer 2009.

Posted in Science. Tags: Arctic, Barents Sea, MODIS, plankton on July 30, 2015 by Mark Brandon. Mark Brandon • July 10, 2015

There is a lot happening at the edge of the Greenland Ice Sheet as summer progresses, and the MODIS sensor on the TERRA and AQUA satellites is a wonderful way to observe it.

I noticed the other day (8 July 2015) this beautiful image of fast ice breaking out of a Fjord on the east coast at 76N

Fast ice breaking out of an East Greenland fjord

The full image can get down to 250 m per pixel and it is amazing stuff. The image below (from Google Earth) shows the location.

Location of the enlargement

And now in the 9 July MODIS image you can see very many large pools of water on the edge of the Greenland Ice sheet. Again, remember each pixel of this image is 250 m across – they look small but that are large pools.

…continue reading →

Posted in Science. Tags: fast ice, fjord, google earth, Greenland, lake, melt, MODIS on July 10, 2015 by Mark Brandon.