earthstory reblogged
1kibbyk-deactivated20181203
Sunsets. Eagle Rock , Pasadena, California (iPhone 5s still) Photo by Kibby K
Original caption:
Los Angeles at night is a panoply of old and new buildings and signs lit up in a stationary parade each vying for your attention. This is my attempt at celebrating and preserving what glows, blinks, shines in this city between dusk and dawn. Like previous works, I discovered much of what is in this video in the process of making it. Everything was always there in the places I had been many times before but I was too busy to notice. It’s amazing what you find when stop and look!
Carbon carbon everywhere Earlier this summer, NASA Launched the Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite, OCO-2. It is designed to give a type of data never before available – direct measurements of local CO2 abundances in small areas over the planet. By measuring CO2 at small scales, OCO-2 will be able to identify carbon pollution sources around the world and, importantly, compare the sizes of sources and sinks, to allow an accurate estimate of how much CO2 is being pumped out by different countries and different processes. This is some early data from OCO-2 covering the San Gabriel Valley just north of Los Angeles. The size and color of the dots correlate with the measured CO2 at each point and each nearly-vertical streak is likely an orbital pass over the area. OCO-2 is literally measuring carbon abundances on the scale of city blocks. The San Gabriel Valley was used for this data because there is an active sampling site at Caltech that allows for comparison of on-the-ground measurements of CO2 to those from the atmosphere; OCO-2 matched the ground-based measurements to within 3 ppm CO2. In other words, the satellite worked beautifully, and even implies that the area above the ground in Pasadena has a slightly higher CO2 content than the air sampled at the ground. There are elevated CO2 contents shown in the western part of the area where there are hills and few homes. This could indicate either CO2 building up in these areas, or it could be a mathematical artifact; calibration of the satellite requires knowing the topography precisely as the satellite measures a vertical column through the atmosphere and the total amount of atmosphere is proportional to the topography. This type of early data therefore is good for testing the satellite as well as for improving the calibration that will allow it to begin producing global data sets for CO2 emissions throughout the 2015 calendar year. -JBB Image credit: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=84655