stuff here folks..  We already paid for it. 
               if anyone asks - I don't know me.
               

This is a 275 frame, DBLNTSC 320x200 32 color .ANIM5 animation spanning
sightly under 11 days (Nov 7-17,1996).  It was made by downloading
satellite images from the internet;
 (ftp://explorer.arc.nasa.gov:21/pub/Weather/GMS-5/jpg/ir3/4km/)
scaling and converting with ADPro; and assembling with Brilliance.

The viewpoint is from ~22,000 miles above the earth's equator, at the
longitude of Australia, using the water vapor channel of satellite GMS-5.
(see "vis_iff"; the visible counterpart to an infrared image from early
in the .anim) What you are seeing is water vapor at the top of the
troposhpere. (the layer of the atmosphere in which most weather occurs)
The color palette is arbitrary, since the image data represents infrared
wavelengths of light.  White is 'lots'; black and dark blue is 'little'.

At the start, you can see a large typhoon which then dissipates over
the northern Pacific ocean.  The boiling appearance over the equatorial
region is just that:  the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), where
air heated by strong sunshine builds into large convective clouds and 
thunderstorms which pump water vapor into the upper atmosphere.

North and south of the ITCZ are areas of predominantly high pressure,
where the air sinks and dries.  These zones, the subtropics, tend to be
quite dry, as is seen by the darker colors in these images.  Not
coincidentally, these areas correspond to the greatest deserts on earth,
the Sahara, the American southwest, and northern Australia, amongst others.

At higher latitudes, we see the temperate zones, typified by generally
west to east airflow, with the wavering effect of high and low pressure
systems that bring most of us in The US and Europe our ever changing weather.

Science aside; I find this entrancing and beautiful!  I hope you will, too.


comments are welcome!

email:       rch@blarg.net

snail mail:  Bob Harrington
             1407 2nd Ave W  Apt 310
             Seattle, WA  98119
             USA

Made on an Amiga 4000/040  OS 3.0  18 Meg RAM  2.6G HD (filling fast...)

 PERMSSN    UID  GID    PACKED    SIZE  RATIO     CRC       STAMP          NAME
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
[generic]                59777   70500  84.8% -lh5- 1c6c Nov 17  1996 Vis_iff
[generic]                  410    2658  15.4% -lh5- 9dc5 Nov 17  1996 Vis_iff.info
[generic]              4724478 5435766  86.9% -lh5- 1a05 Nov 17  1996 Weather_ANIM.anim5
[generic]                  242     592  40.9% -lh5- fda4 Nov 17  1996 Weather_ANIM.anim5.info
[generic]                 1329    2409  55.2% -lh5- 6f1d Nov 17  1996 Weather_ANIM.readme
[generic]                  241     495  48.7% -lh5- a680 Nov 17  1996 Weather_ANIM.readme.info
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
 Total         6 files 4786477 5512420  86.8%            Nov 22  1996