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The archive contains Automatic Picture Transmissions (APT) by US weather satellites NOAA-15, NOAA-18 and NOAA-19.
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2024-09-09 12:36:26
Toronto (High Park), Canada
Canada
NOAA-18
2024-09-09 11:33:25
Sasha Engelmann
Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom
United Kingdom
NOAA-19
A low-hanging layer of clouds obscures the sky today, and very little light illuminates the streets and gardens of our neighbourhood. I think about a passage in the recently published 'State of the Climate' report by the American Meteorological Society. It explains that, in 2023, there was more water vapour in the atmosphere than many years past, but also, "Despite this increased moisture aloft, 2023 had the lowest cloud area fraction since records began in 1980 with skies clearer globally. Consequently, the clouds reflected away to space a record small amount of shortwave radiation, but also blocked a record small amount of longwave radiation from leaving Earth. The overall effect was the weakest cooling effect of clouds on record". The report goes on to explain a global 'darkening' due to reduced sea ice and other ice-covered areas - here 'darkening' refers to the increased proportion of earth's surfaces that absorb light, rather than reflect it. At the same time, in the UK and across northern Europe, the changing and 'wobbling' route of the jet stream is bringing cloudier, stormier, wetter weather. As I peer up at the thick grey cloud, the term 'darkening' seems to register with many meteorological and more-than-meteorological affects. I manage to coax enough light from a table lamp into the microscope to see the veins of a fallen, yellow Plane tree leaf.
2024-09-09 06:40:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station 2
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Heavy rain and cold. In the Vienna woods, mist hangs dense and low between the trees. Back in the flat, on the phone to my mum, I noticed a red balloon suspended above the rooftops. It appears to be tethered by a long string, implausibly stretching the length of the block before disappearing behind a roof. The string is long and weighs down the balloon, which despite its size must have had significant buoyancy. It looks not much larger than a child’s party balloon, but perhaps this was an illusion of perspective. I wondered if it is a weather balloon come back to Earth, however there is no visible payload. Perhaps it is a child's ambitious experiment?
2024-09-08 12:39:48
Sasha Engelmann
Hackney Downs, London,
NOAA-18
To the southeast, a gap in a towering panorama of clouds looks like a giant lens or a portal, magnifying rays of light. Two men walk by my ground station asking 'is there signal??' and then exclaiming 'you see the storm is picking up!'. Yet the wind does not rise further than a few sharp gusts and the clouds dance past. In my daily micro-weather observations, I look at 'Lumbricus' (an earthworm with its movement muscles), 'Anopheles male E' (a male mosquito) and a fragment of Selaginella sporophylls (also known as the spikemosses or clubmosses). I read that Selaginella are known as the 'fern allies' - I thought this was a nice phrase, if read non-scientifically. Some species of Selaginella are known as the 'resurrection plant' because they can survive complete dehydration, much like the lichens I wrote about yesterday. These moss-like plants roll up into brown balls, but rehydrate and expand when moistened. On this theme of 'resurrection' or 'time-traveling' or bending of temporal/ spatial ideas of life, I am reminded of a passage in the book Ceremony (1977) by Leslie Marmon Silko. It is a scene from the perspective of Tayo, a man of Laguna Indian and Mexican heritage who returns from the war in Vietnam. At dawn, Tayo is watching the life emerging around a small pool filled by a spring in the otherwise bone-dry mountains on the reservation. He observes: "When the shadows were gone, and the cliff rock began to get warm, the frogs came out from their sleeping places in small cracks and niches in the cliff above the pool. They were the colour of the moss near the spring, and their backs were spotted the colour of wet sand. They moved slowly into the sun, blinking their big eyes. He watched them dive into the pool, one by one, with a graceful quiet sound. They swam across the pool to the sunny edge and sat there looking at him, snapping at the tiny insects that swarmed in the shade and grass around the pool. He smiled. They were the rain's children. He had seen it happen many times after a rainstorm. In dried up ponds and in the dry arroyo sands, even as the rain was still falling, they came popping up through the ground, with wet sand still on their backs. Josiah said they could stay buried in the dry sand for many years, waiting for the rain to come again" (Silko, 1977: 87-88).
2024-09-08 09:58:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station 2
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
Tomorrow is Schulstartwoche (the week Austria's public schools reopen after the summer break). On Saturday, the man who I buy apples from at the market, tells me that he remembers the Schulstartwoche being cold and rainy. Today, it was so warm outside we closed the windows to keep the flat cool, only to give into the humidity and reopen them. Weather forecasts suggests that, inline with memories of Schulstartwoche, Monday will being heavy rains, causing the temperature to drop to a chilly 19C.
2024-09-07 12:51:46
Sasha Engelmann
Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom
United Kingdom
NOAA-18
Hello lichen, who and when are you? This morning over breakfast I read a post by my friend Adriana Knouf about project Obxeno which is an automomous, solar-powered apparatus and camera watching lichens in a park around the clock. Though lichens are famously slow growers (some only grow around 1mm / year) one of Obxeno's timelapse videos seems to show a rapid grown of a lichen leaf or thallus, sort of blossoming out of the larger body. A curved piece of bark glowed bright yellow and green on the pavement on my way back from the farmers market. Later in Hackney Downs, I saw many smaller fragments of lichen in the grass, and I couldn't help borrowing two small pieces to put under the microscope at home. As I wandered through the labyrinths, caves, colours and depths of the lichens I brought home, I learned they were, like many lichens, collaborations between a green algae and a fungus. For the (at least) two lichens I was looking at, the lichen-forming fungi were Physciaceae and Teloschistaceae, both apparently relatively common and 'cosmopolitan' according to what I could find online. I read these samples in my living room were 'micro-lichen' and their shapes were foliose (leafy) and leprose (like a powder dusting). Lichens are believed to be some of the oldest organisms on earth (though how to define the limits of their identity as 'singular' organism challenges many of Science's principles). They can grow on almost any surface and they can even live inside solid rock, growing between the grains! The collaboration between the algae and the fungi is beneficial because the algae produce carbohydrates via photosynthesis that are used by the fungi, and the fungi provides a protective environment while also gathering moisture and nutrients. When fungi form partnerships with cyanobacteria in certain species of lichen, the cyanobacteria can even fix Nitrogen from the air. I learned that lichens were sent to the vaccum of space by the European Space Agency and exposed for fifteen days to the vacuum, with its widely fluctuating temperatures and cosmic radiation. After 15 days, the lichens were brought back to earth and were found to be unchanged in their ability to photosynthesize. If a lichen can live without water, and even without air; if it is never only 'one' but 'more than one'; if a lichen may be ancient or renewed each day, then perhaps, from the perspective of a lichen, energy, space and time are things that can be bent, molded, malleable. People like Adriana have said this to me before, but I am finally understanding lichens as both space and time-travellers...
2024-09-07 10:11:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station 2
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
V and I, adamant that it was the last day of summer, caught the train in the opposite direction from home to Hallstattsee. The lake was blissful. Its steep sides and deep waters have kept it cool, even after the hottest of summers. This we learned this from an older couple and their two dogs, who joined us on the narrow pebble beach. I took my first dip since the operation. The cold water held me, drawing me down. Despite my caution and an unfamiliar tugging in my abdomen, I dipped under again and again. The feeling was one of release. I extended my body, unfolding and stretching it in ways that I have not since the beginning of August. The lake’s water was cloudy and its stoney bottom, quickly dropped away. With my film camera, I photographed V floating in a starfish position, her peach colour swim suit beautifully offset by the dark greens of the lake and mountain side. In that moment, I think that we both felt a supreme confidence and peace in our bodies.
2024-09-06 19:19:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station 2
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
It is one month since the operation and being engulfed by the 'closest weather' of my body. Last night I dreamt that I was standing in a brackish pool near the coast, bare foot with a fine mud between my toes. N and S are nearby. The coastline could be West Scotland. N asks if I’ve stood in the pool before. I know that I have, but for reasons I cannot explain, I lie and say that I haven't. Stripy leaches appear from the mud and attach their mouths to my feet. In horror, I freeze, unable to move for fear of stirring up more leaches. N reaches over and helps me jump out of the pool. I wake distressed and go to the next room where N is sleeping. I fall asleep again, only to dream that I am at a surreal hospital check-up.
2024-09-06 10:29:48
Sasha Engelmann
Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom
United Kingdom
NOAA-19
For the second day, the weather is damp, grey and dark, with intermittent rain. The park was wet and puddled, but plenty of people were out walking, having coffee and running with dogs. I breifly cuddled with Moonpie as Dave arrived at the park: 'you're one of the only people he runs up to like that, and also lets pet him' Dave said. By the time that sentence was finished, Moonpie was off again, racing to the other corner of the park. I collected some specimens - a leaf of clover, common yarrow and a tiny bump of moss found on the damp brick of the wall outside the house - to explore with the microscope. The 'weather worlds' of these small plants came alive under the lens - the moss danced with long whitish filaments that I learned could be sporophytes, and its stems and leaves bristled below. The yarrow was difficult to bring into focus because of its three dimensionality, but slowly the tips of leaves came into view, and I saw that it was covered in micro droplets. The stem of the clover almost shimmered, and I wondered if this was water coursing within the tissue, or just a quality of the surface.
2024-09-05 19:31:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station 2
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
Despite the daytime heat, the nights are cooler. Only the mosquitoes continue to be a pest. There must have been a mass hatching event as there are so many, espcially in the studio. I think that I am now able to tell part the larger black and white striped ‘common’ mosquito from the smaller brown ‘tiger’ mosquito.
With some encouragement, the last of my five scabs 'fell' came off. I pulled at the plastic surgical threads still protruding my my belly button but they wouldn’t budge and later my tummy ached. Once all the wounds are seal, I can swim again. These days, I can mostly move without pain but I am still cautious about twisting or turning too suddenly. I wonder if the doctor will find adhesions when I have my check-up in two weeks. The thin red scars look small on the surface but feel bulbous beneath the skin. In the evening, S from the hospital, WhatsApp'ed me to say that her endometriosis had already returned. The news is disturbing. She already has a new cyst! So, soon? “No one could have known,” she writes.
2024-09-05 19:09:26
Sasha Engelmann
Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom
United Kingdom
NOAA-15
'Cabbage clubroot'; 'bee leg with pollen sack'; 'cucurbita ts stem' (cucumber stem); 'dryopteris filix-mas' (male fern); T and I pored over dozens of microscope slides rescued from an old science building due to close or be refurbished at Goldsmiths University. T had even rescued a microscope - the older kind with no light for illumination, and only a mirror - that otherwise would have been tossed. Too engrossed to cook dinner, we ordered pizza and kept speculating about the worlds made visible through tiny pieces of glass and magnifying lenses. Based on my undergraduate training in plant biology I thought I could identify the cambium in a slide containing a sliver of wood, but I wasn't sure. In the midst of this I went outside for an early evening NOAA-15 pass and wondered again about scale, patterns, fractals.
2024-09-04 23:28:08
Melody Matin
Toronto, Canada
Canada
NOAA-18
2024-09-04 19:40:52
Melody Matin
Toronto (High Park),
NOAA-15
lots of mosquitoes out this evening
2024-09-04 12:03:01
Melody Matin
Toronto (High Park), Canada
Canada
NOAA-18
2024-09-04 11:07:28
Melody Matin
Toronto (High Park), Canada
Canada
NOAA-19
I'm having a harder time these days tracking the satellites as they pass overhead. With one small movement I can lose a good signal. But I try to stay positive as I redirect the antenna to find the signal again.
2024-09-04 10:55:07
Sasha Engelmann
Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom
United Kingdom
NOAA-19
"We need to understand weather to understand where and how toxic air is held closer to peoples' lungs" - this is a statement that I wrote years ago as part of a grant application. Today I wondered: how much do I understand about the inter-implicancies of weather and air pollution, at least in the region where I live? I deep-dived into the Copernicus Programme's Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) and the freely available air quality forecast plots available at the link below. Out of the four plots I studied most closely - for Dust, PM10, NO2 and Ammonia - I was most surprised by the Ammonia plot, which shows the vast majority of continental Europe covered in what looks like a toxic orange cloud. Ammonia is less publicised as an air pollutant in the media- we more often hear about 'Saharan Dust' or 'Nitrogen dioxide' or 'Ozone'. Yet I learned that ammonia leaks from agricultural practices, livestock waste, and the use of synthetic fertilisers. Moreover it combines in the atmosphere with sulphates and nitrates to form secondary fine particulate matter (PM2.5) which can enter the bloodstream of breathing bodies due to its very small size. Ammonia and PM2.5 are clearly too small or fine to 'show up' in satellite images like those of NOAA-19, but I learned that newly launched satellites, like NASA's PACE satellite, are intended to fill in the gap in knowledge around what aerosols actually do in the atmosphere. For example, according to climate scientist and modeller Gavin Schmidt we don't yet understand how a change in regulatory policy affecting ship fuel (mandating a move away from sulfur-based fuels toward 'cleaner' options) might have had on the climate in 2023. Sulfur can combine with other molecules in the atmosphere to reflect light and change the density of clouds, therefore possibly having a cooling effect, so moving away from such fuel sources is speculated to have had warming effects. The implications of such vast changes in fuel use for the types of aerosols in the atmosphere are immense, and yet it is hard to scale up from particulate to cloud or weather. I studied the satellite image I captured today and wondered about whether dust, perhaps, was blurring the borders of land and sea...
Source: https://tinyurl.com/4xcpkaxx
2024-09-03 20:50:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station 2
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
Sunny, but not too hot. A manageable heat to get work done in.
2024-09-03 11:19:32
Melody Matin
Toronto, Canada
Canada
NOAA-19
It's one of those September days where the air is cool in the shade and hot in the sun. After a few days of struggling to get good signal, it was encouraging when I heard those very clear ticks and beeps. I did this capture in my backyard with just a short view of the sky.
2024-09-03 11:08:44
Sasha Engelmann
Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom
United Kingdom
NOAA-19
"Muffin man!" "Moonpie!" I heard in the distance as a black ball of fur careened into the side of my body and I was greeted by the happy face of a small pomeranian mix who promptly sat down against my leg. The wobble of my radio antenna probably registered in the satellite image I was capturing but the company was more than worth it! Muffin Man followed Moonpie, as well as another dog called Star, and I was soon surrounded by small joyful dog energy. I learned that Star was being fostered after having been rescued from perilous conditions, and would soon be given to a family for care and a home. Our conversation attracted another dog owner who came over to get information on a recent incident where an off-collar dog attacked another dog in the park. For some minutes, rumours circulated about who the attacking dog belonged to and what had happened, with speculation that the owner might even have been sent to prison. The moral of the encounter seemed to be that dogs are capable of anything, no matter how cute and lovable they are- yet no matter how hard I looked at Moonpie, I just couldn't imagine him being scary. In the swirl of activity, dog-cuddling and conversation, the satellite passed overhead and crested the southern horizon, and I packed without so much attention to the semi-clouded sky.
2024-09-02 21:03:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station 2
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
There are so many mosquitos in the studio! They bite you even when you are wearing buy spray.
2024-09-02 12:15:45
Sasha Engelmann
Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom
United Kingdom
NOAA-18
A fine drizzle was carpeting the neighbourhood as I went out with my tape measure Yagi antenna today. I wasn't expecting the rain, so I found a still densely foliated Plane tree to give cover. Later in the day, en route to South London, the rain had started again. I had checked and rechecked the weather report before getting on my bike, and all that was predicted was a lot of cloud. I remembered what my scientist colleague said earlier this summer about the increasing moisture to be expected in a climate-changed Northern Europe based on a wobbling jet stream. Despite the moisture-laden air, the rest of the day was textured with immense relief, new knowledge, and support from my partner T. Two cats offered their emotional energies too.