Distribution: This animation is freely redistributable, this is US Government
stuff here folks.. We already paid for it.
if anyone asks - I don't know me.
This is a lower resolution, but longer (time-wise) version of Weather_ANIM.lha,
also available on Aminet. It is in response to requests from some good folks
who had better things to spend their hard earned cash on than RAM. =)
(erg! I have a 400x300 version at 23+ Megs... three cheers for virtual memory!)
This is a 566 frame, DBLNTSC 160x100 32 color .ANIM5 animation spanning
roughly 25 days (Nov 7 - Dec 2,1996). 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...)
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