WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:12.120 --> 00:00:13.980 [GENSINI] Thanks for coming, everyone, 00:00:13.980 --> 00:00:19.620 to the first probably student demonstration of Science on a Sphere. 00:00:20.700 --> 00:00:22.080 My name is Victor Gensini. 00:00:22.080 --> 00:00:25.170 I am an associate professor in the Department of Geographic Atmospheric Science – 00:00:25.170 --> 00:00:28.620 actually not Geographic Science anymore -- Earth Atmospheric Environment. 00:00:30.480 --> 00:00:33.480 We have a beautiful display in the library now. 00:00:33.480 --> 00:00:37.920 This is really started  through NOA, National Oceanic  00:00:37.920 --> 00:00:40.020 and Atmospheric Administration  for data visualization, 00:00:40.020 --> 00:00:46.680 and now we have, uh, a live Science on a Sphere at NIU, so it is awesome to have this. 00:00:46.680 --> 00:00:48.720 The Science on a Sphere has two modes. 00:00:48.720 --> 00:00:50.280 You can look at realtime data   00:00:51.360 --> 00:00:56.640 stemming from primarily the geostationary observation satellites that NOA, 00:00:56.640 --> 00:01:01.440 has 16, 17, and soon to be  18 that will replace GO 17. 00:01:01.440 --> 00:01:05.100 It also has an archive mode, where you can basically put anything up there 00:01:05.100 --> 00:01:08.040 that can be wrapped around a sperical projection, 00:01:08.040 --> 00:01:12.360 so, right, most of the maps that we look at in Atmospheric Science or Climate Science 00:01:12.360 --> 00:01:14.520 are generally two dimensions in nature. 00:01:14.520 --> 00:01:17.100 It is often very hard to understand the size of  00:01:17.100 --> 00:01:21.480 countries in those lat/long  or Mercator projections. 00:01:21.480 --> 00:01:23.520 When you put things in  spherical coordinates like this, 00:01:23.520 --> 00:01:28.860 I think it makes your perception, uh, of the actual data itself more realistic, 00:01:28.860 --> 00:01:31.440 more true to scale, especially in space. 00:01:31.440 --> 00:01:34.620 So what I am showing you right now is actually realtime clouds. 00:01:34.620 --> 00:01:40.140 This is from GO 1617, to  Media Swiss Satellite, also  00:01:40.140 --> 00:01:42.780 from the JMA, the Japanese Meteorological Agency, 00:01:42.780 --> 00:01:47.940 that also has a geostationary satellite, and you are looking at basically cloud-enhanced IR, 00:01:47.940 --> 00:01:57.300 so we can see anywhere that is essentially white are, uh, clouds as viewed from, say, your – 00:01:57.300 --> 00:02:00.840 imagine you are flying in the International Space Station looking down towards Earth. 00:02:00.840 --> 00:02:03.480 This is essentially what you would sort of be looking at. 00:02:04.740 --> 00:02:07.320 You obviously wouldn't see the day and night with your visible spectra. 00:02:07.320 --> 00:02:10.020 When we put things in infrared imagery, we can use  00:02:10.020 --> 00:02:14.820 false color scales to kind of  trick us into seeing clouds, 00:02:14.820 --> 00:02:19.500 and this is over the past -- if I pause it here, 00:02:19.500 --> 00:02:25.260 actually, this is over the  last month or so, you can see  00:02:25.260 --> 00:02:28.680 the date right now on the sphere is September 1st. 00:02:28.680 --> 00:02:32.580 This is about as close as you are going to get to live, and I want to draw your attention 00:02:32.580 --> 00:02:38.520 to this Cinnabon swirl that is approaching the West Coast of Asia, 00:02:38.520 --> 00:02:44.040 and you can actually see a very vivid eye in that typhoon this morning. 00:02:44.040 --> 00:02:46.980 I am going to swirl the sphere around. 00:02:46.980 --> 00:02:52.320 I'm not quite -- and I will tip it down to kind of show you where that typhoon is located right now. 00:02:52.320 --> 00:02:57.540 You can very nicely see, uh, the eyewall yesterday  00:02:58.500 --> 00:03:00.840 that has sort of deteriorated  a little bit this morning. 00:03:02.100 --> 00:03:08.160 So when we take these geostationary images, we take them generally every 5 to 10 minutes, 00:03:08.160 --> 00:03:11.700 um, and then we can loop them into a movie, but  00:03:11.700 --> 00:03:14.040 you will see at the seems  there is a nice crease there, 00:03:14.040 --> 00:03:19.380 and that's because, right, any given satellite can only look at half of the Earth at once, 00:03:19.380 --> 00:03:24.720 and, of course, as you go to the edges of that projection, you are greatly distorted. 00:03:25.260 --> 00:03:30.060 So there is really only true to character in terms of size right over the location 00:03:30.060 --> 00:03:33.780 of where the geostationary satellite is, and when I say "geostationary," 00:03:33.780 --> 00:03:38.220 that means that the Earth is essentially rotating at essentially the same velocity 00:03:38.220 --> 00:03:41.670 that the satellite is  rotating, so it always, right – 00:03:41.670 --> 00:03:45.300 imagine yourself, if you are a geostationary orbit satellite, you are basically – 00:03:45.300 --> 00:03:49.080 as the sphere is rotating, the satellite is rotating at that same rate, 00:03:49.080 --> 00:03:53.760 so it always sees the same location at the center of its image, 00:03:53.760 --> 00:03:56.400 and those satellites can get  out of orbit a little bit, 00:03:56.400 --> 00:03:58.620 right, and there is little  ways that we can correct  00:03:58.620 --> 00:04:01.260 the orbit of the geostationary  satellites to maintain 00:04:01.260 --> 00:04:03.720 its position perfectly geostationary. 00:04:03.720 --> 00:04:06.720 Those are different than polar  orbiting satellites which  00:04:06.720 --> 00:04:08.880 will generally go from North Pole to South Pole. 00:04:08.880 --> 00:04:13.620 They can fly in much lower Earth orbit and get much higher resolution imagery, 00:04:13.620 --> 00:04:19.080 but these satellites are flying anywhere from 200 to 250 kilometers above the surface of the Earth, 00:04:19.080 --> 00:04:22.560 depending on the type of satellite. 00:04:22.560 --> 00:04:27.840 So this is just one way that we can visualize current weather patterns across the globe, right? 00:04:27.840 --> 00:04:30.240 You see these beautiful in the Northern Hemisphere  00:04:30.240 --> 00:04:32.340 storms, that are rotating  kind of counter-clockwise. 00:04:32.340 --> 00:04:36.360 I will kind of tip you in a different direction here to make your brain hurt a little bit. 00:04:39.240 --> 00:04:44.040 I am still doing the Z-axis rotate, but now I am basically creating a new North and South Pole, 00:04:44.040 --> 00:04:46.140 just so you can look at a different way. 00:04:46.740 --> 00:04:49.560 This is a way to visualize  the general circulation of  00:04:49.560 --> 00:04:51.660 our atmosphere, where in the Northern Hemisphere, 00:04:51.660 --> 00:04:57.720 if I get your bearings back, storm systems will be rotating in a counterclockwise fashion. 00:04:57.720 --> 00:05:04.260 I am going to get back just to about proper orientation here, and in the Southern Hemisphere 00:05:04.260 --> 00:05:07.860 those same storm systems will actually rotate clockwise in nature. 00:05:07.860 --> 00:05:09.420 Who knows why that happens? 00:05:09.420 --> 00:05:14.460 What is the reason for the difference in rotation for storms in any given hemisphere? 00:05:14.460 --> 00:05:15.260 Yes, Ben. 00:05:15.260 --> 00:05:17.426 [STUDENT] The Coriolis Effect. 00:05:17.426 --> 00:05:17.456 [GENSINI] The Coriolis Effect. 00:05:17.456 --> 00:05:23.400 The Coriolis Effect essentially has no bearing on things like the direction your toilet 00:05:23.400 --> 00:05:28.800 will flush or shooting a  basketball, but the Coriolis  00:05:28.800 --> 00:05:33.180 Effect does have a big  impact over long-time scales 00:05:33.180 --> 00:05:37.200 and long distances, and so essentially as the Earth rotates, 00:05:37.800 --> 00:05:42.060 there is an apparent  deflection that you see if you  00:05:42.060 --> 00:05:45.420 are a nonstationary observer above the Earth, 00:05:45.420 --> 00:05:48.900 and you see this apparent deflection to the right in the Northern Hemisphere 00:05:48.900 --> 00:05:51.780 and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere. 00:05:51.780 --> 00:05:54.300 So that's essentially the IR. 00:05:54.300 --> 00:05:56.400 What we can do, of course, we have all kind of  00:05:56.400 --> 00:05:58.800 different fields from our  remote sensing platforms. 00:05:58.800 --> 00:06:02.100 This is also geostationary data, 00:06:02.100 --> 00:06:07.500 but it is also combined with polar-orbiting data from other satellites 00:06:07.500 --> 00:06:10.440 that can at least estimate precipitation rate. 00:06:11.220 --> 00:06:15.780 Not all clouds produce precipitation, right, but some do, 00:06:15.780 --> 00:06:19.800 and you will notice wherever  there is bolstering of red, 00:06:19.800 --> 00:06:25.200 the satellite is at least picking up a more robust signal for precipitation in those clouds, 00:06:25.200 --> 00:06:29.400 and I am just going to stop here for a second and draw your attention to Africa. 00:06:30.300 --> 00:06:32.880 We are moving into a time of the year here in September 00:06:32.880 --> 00:06:37.500 where we are sort of in the peak of at least The Atlantic basin hurricane activity. 00:06:37.500 --> 00:06:42.540 It has been fairly quiet so far this year, but we can see there is at least plenty of opportunities. 00:06:42.540 --> 00:06:44.760 This is dated yesterday. 00:06:44.760 --> 00:06:48.180 I am specifically looking at this cluster of thunderstorm activity. 00:06:48.180 --> 00:06:49.140 I am going to rotate it around. 00:06:49.140 --> 00:06:52.080 It is kind of the red blob in Central Africa. 00:06:52.080 --> 00:06:57.480 That will be the opportunity maybe for next development of any sort of tropical system 00:06:57.480 --> 00:06:58.980 that would move into the Atlantic. 00:06:58.980 --> 00:07:01.560 The conditions right now  are just not very favorable  00:07:01.560 --> 00:07:03.840 for any landfalling hurricanes  in the United States 00:07:03.840 --> 00:07:08.040 because the steering pressure, the high, Bermuda High that we really watch, 00:07:09.660 --> 00:07:14.580 to watch the path of these  cyclones is very far north 00:07:14.580 --> 00:07:19.080 and east and will really allow the storms to recurve around that high, 00:07:19.080 --> 00:07:23.880 not really pose a threat right now to any hurricane activity in North America. 00:07:23.880 --> 00:07:25.440 This is fascinating. 00:07:25.440 --> 00:07:26.880 You could sit here and watch this all day. 00:07:26.880 --> 00:07:30.720 I often say that I want to come and camp out underneath the Sphere one night. 00:07:30.720 --> 00:07:33.600 It seems very, very peaceful especially when you are here all by yourself. 00:07:34.680 --> 00:07:37.080 We have some other really  cool things that we can do. 00:07:37.080 --> 00:07:42.060 We can overlay analysis or reanalysis data onto The Sphere, 00:07:42.060 --> 00:07:45.420 so here is an example of 250-millibar wind speeds. 00:07:45.420 --> 00:07:47.220 I am going to go ahead and also rotate this. 00:07:47.760 --> 00:07:50.580 This is essentially up at  what we call jetstream level, 00:07:51.420 --> 00:07:57.060 so up where commercial aircraft fly, 30- to 35,000 feet, their cruising altitude. 00:07:57.900 --> 00:08:03.060 This would be a depiction of what winds those aircraft are essentially encountering. 00:08:03.060 --> 00:08:06.840 You can see the mid-latitude westerlies that are prevalent in both hemispheres 00:08:06.840 --> 00:08:09.660 and the general weak flow  that we see in the tropics  00:08:09.660 --> 00:08:13.320 associated with mostly rising air convergent air 00:08:13.320 --> 00:08:19.440 near the intertropical convergent zone, very, very weak winds at the... at that level. 00:08:20.280 --> 00:08:24.060 The tropical winds that are much stronger are actually above 250 millibars. 00:08:24.060 --> 00:08:28.560 You have to get up toward 150, even 100 millibars to see faster wind speeds in the tropics 00:08:28.560 --> 00:08:32.340 because of the height of the tropopause there. 00:08:32.340 --> 00:08:33.720 I am going to pause just for a second. 00:08:33.720 --> 00:08:38.640 I will bring down North America, and I will try to rotate this into view for all of you. 00:08:38.640 --> 00:08:41.400 You can put forecast model data on this. 00:08:41.400 --> 00:08:43.500 In fact, in a little bit I  will show you the forecast  00:08:43.500 --> 00:08:46.080 for this weekend across North America. 00:08:46.080 --> 00:08:50.700 You can look at these data, also historical, but also future, so it is a really cool way to, again, 00:08:50.700 --> 00:08:57.360 visualize current conditions, forecast conditions for things like jet level winds. 00:08:57.360 --> 00:09:00.000 Let's see if we can do sea surface temperature. 00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:03.000 This is also really important  for tropical activity. 00:09:03.000 --> 00:09:04.920 What is the current sea surface temperature? 00:09:04.920 --> 00:09:06.540 Let me go ahead and rotate that. 00:09:08.220 --> 00:09:10.980 So, of course, the oranges and reds are warmer waters. 00:09:10.980 --> 00:09:15.660 You get towards the poles you see much cooler temperatures at the sea surface, 00:09:15.660 --> 00:09:16.860 basically the skin temperature. 00:09:17.760 --> 00:09:20.040 What is the temperature we  generally like to see if  00:09:20.040 --> 00:09:23.340 we want tropical activity  across the Atlantic basin? 00:09:23.340 --> 00:09:25.560 Anybody know what that kind of cut-off is? 00:09:26.580 --> 00:09:30.180 We generally like to see the water about 80 degrees Fahrenheit or greater. 00:09:30.720 --> 00:09:33.900 That tends to flip a switch in tropical activity. 00:09:33.900 --> 00:09:38.520 Then there is enough, uh, moist  static energy through evaporation,   00:09:38.520 --> 00:09:42.960 latent heat release, that occurs  when you have precipitating systems. 00:09:42.960 --> 00:09:47.400 It is enough of a heat engine to provide... to sustain the tropical activity, 00:09:47.400 --> 00:09:50.760 and we don't get tropical activity right over the Equator, 00:09:51.420 --> 00:09:54.360 generally speaking because the Coriolis Effect is too weak. 00:09:54.360 --> 00:09:58.920 Remember, the Coriolis Effect is zero right at the Equator where your latitude is also at zero. 00:09:58.920 --> 00:10:02.040 Other things you can do, it is not all Atmospheric Science-related. 00:10:02.040 --> 00:10:04.260 We can look at geological events. 00:10:04.260 --> 00:10:06.600 You can look at bird migrations. 00:10:06.600 --> 00:10:10.680 The Science on a Sphere has the opportunity to... 00:10:10.680 --> 00:10:14.700 you can overlay all commercial aircraft flying around the world right now. 00:10:14.700 --> 00:10:17.220 That's a really cool thing to look at. 00:10:17.220 --> 00:10:19.140 What you are looking at  right now is actually recent  00:10:19.140 --> 00:10:22.680 earthquakes from the USGS,  U.S. Geological Society, 00:10:22.680 --> 00:10:28.680 anything that can be projected on Google Earth or on sphere can be projected on Science on a Sphere, 00:10:28.680 --> 00:10:30.960 so it is not just for weather and climate science. 00:10:30.960 --> 00:10:36.120 It is really visualization tool for anything out of two-dimensional space. 00:10:36.120 --> 00:10:40.980 Any time you want to look at things in a spherical projection, spherical process 00:10:41.820 --> 00:10:47.580 and stay true to that projection, you can do that on Science on a Sphere, pretty cool stuff. 00:10:48.420 --> 00:10:51.180 We don't have to just look at Earth even in the spherical sense. 00:10:51.180 --> 00:10:53.130 We can actually -- and I will spin this around – 00:10:53.130 --> 00:10:57.900 we have one geostationary orbiting satellite that actually faces towards the sun. 00:10:57.900 --> 00:11:02.400 We only have one of these, so you are only seeing half of the current picture, 00:11:02.400 --> 00:11:06.540 but as the sun rotates as well about every 35 Earth days, 00:11:06.540 --> 00:11:10.680 we do get to kind of see the entire sun throughout its life cycle. 00:11:10.680 --> 00:11:13.920 So, again, I will try to move this around so you can so what is going on. 00:11:13.920 --> 00:11:19.200 This is really helpful for monitoring CMEs, Coronal Mass Ejections, solar storms, flares, 00:11:19.200 --> 00:11:24.780 things that are coming off the surface of the sun faced towards Earth, right, 00:11:24.780 --> 00:11:26.940 that might impact our space weather. 00:11:28.200 --> 00:11:31.800 We have an entire agency  dedicated to space weather  00:11:31.800 --> 00:11:36.300 prediction, when RF, RHF, or VHF communication 00:11:36.300 --> 00:11:39.360 might get impacted through these types of solar flares. 00:11:39.360 --> 00:11:43.800 Of course, these are also  the primary source of the  00:11:43.800 --> 00:11:46.020 Aurora Borealis, so when  we see The Northern Lights, 00:11:46.020 --> 00:11:50.580 um, these types of coronal mass ejections usually  00:11:50.580 --> 00:11:53.400 cause changes in Earth's  electromagnetic field that 00:11:53.400 --> 00:11:57.720 can then produce Aurora Borealis, so pretty cool to see that stuff as well. 00:11:57.720 --> 00:11:59.160 You can look at other planets. 00:11:59.160 --> 00:12:00.240 And then,   00:12:00.240 --> 00:12:08.940 of course, you can also just do fun things, uh, like pretty soon it will be Halloween, right, 00:12:08.940 --> 00:12:12.780 so we can put up anything spherical, right, which is really cool, 00:12:12.780 --> 00:12:15.240 and you are not looking at it right in a two-dimensional framework. 00:12:15.240 --> 00:12:21.360 It is true to its projection, makes for very, uh, aesthetically-pleasing projections, 00:12:21.360 --> 00:12:23.760 so with that I am going to stop for a second 00:12:23.760 --> 00:12:27.180 and maybe take any questions that you might have as students. 00:12:27.180 --> 00:12:32.340 I think one of the things  that really... especially  00:12:32.340 --> 00:12:34.440 for weather and climate students, that I see, 00:12:36.180 --> 00:12:39.360 that they are often very shocked about are just the size, 00:12:39.360 --> 00:12:44.160 the natural size of countries relative to what you would see on, 00:12:44.160 --> 00:12:47.760 say, a two-dimensional Mercator projection or Robinson projection of the Earth. 00:12:48.780 --> 00:12:50.640 You know, you look at some  of these projections, and  00:12:50.640 --> 00:12:53.280 you are like I didn't know  Greenland was that small, 00:12:54.000 --> 00:12:57.060 and you look at some projection, Greenland looks like it is massive, 00:12:57.060 --> 00:13:03.360 and, of course, other countries look maybe perhaps much smaller than they typically really are, 00:13:03.360 --> 00:13:05.040 depending on what projection are you looking at. 00:13:05.040 --> 00:13:09.360 Projection is basically just saying how do I take something that is a sphere, 00:13:09.360 --> 00:13:14.220 in this case, a sperical  object in 3D and project it  00:13:14.220 --> 00:13:17.340 into 2D and preserve the characteristics of that? 00:13:17.340 --> 00:13:20.700 So all these different types of projections all have caveats. 00:13:20.700 --> 00:13:23.040 If you are looking at maps of North America, 00:13:23.040 --> 00:13:27.600 what you will typically always see are things like Lambert conformal projections, 00:13:27.600 --> 00:13:32.880 things that try to preserve the area and true shape of North America. 00:13:32.880 --> 00:13:35.280 Of course, if you are  looking at the polar regions,  00:13:35.280 --> 00:13:37.320 we have specific projections for those, 00:13:38.100 --> 00:13:41.100 and they all have caveats because when you are looking at a 2D paper map, 00:13:41.100 --> 00:13:45.420 you cannot replicate the  entire globe, right, spherical  00:13:45.420 --> 00:13:48.780 3D in a two-dimensional  projection without warping it. 00:13:48.780 --> 00:13:52.980 And when you warp it, that's what creates these distortions that do not exist 00:13:52.980 --> 00:13:54.660 when you are looking at Science on a Sphere. 00:13:54.660 --> 00:13:58.140 They are all true to scale and true to size. 00:14:01.320 --> 00:14:08.400 So in the context of other... you know, other things that you can project, of course, GIS, 00:14:08.400 --> 00:14:14.040 this is very GIS-heavy, so again, anything that you can put on a map, 00:14:15.000 --> 00:14:17.640 you could theoretically  put on Science on a Sphere, 00:14:17.640 --> 00:14:23.540 so if you were looking at something like bird migrations or, you know, 00:14:23.540 --> 00:14:28.020 um, military progress in places like Ukraine, 00:14:28.020 --> 00:14:34.560 I mean, you could look at literally anything at all, um, in Science on a Sphere. 00:14:34.560 --> 00:14:37.140 You just to create what is  called "a layer" for it. 00:14:37.140 --> 00:14:40.440 I am going to go back to my play list here and show you some other cool things. 00:14:41.460 --> 00:14:46.800 This is -- so these are sea surface temperatures 00:14:46.800 --> 00:14:54.060 but displayed as a 30-year anomaly as compared to what is normal for the 1981 to 2010 period. 00:14:54.060 --> 00:14:57.960 This gives you a better idea, instead of just looking at the actual temperature, 00:14:57.960 --> 00:15:02.760 say 80 or 85 degrees Fahrenheit water temperature, this allows you to say, 00:15:02.760 --> 00:15:08.280 how does that water temperature compare to what we would expect over a 30-year period? 00:15:08.280 --> 00:15:10.860 And I am going to move  specifically over to this side, 00:15:10.860 --> 00:15:13.860 and then I will pause it and bring the severe around to the other side. 00:15:14.640 --> 00:15:17.700 The water temperatures right now off the coast of South America, 00:15:17.700 --> 00:15:20.280 if you look into the Pacific,  do you see all that blue? 00:15:21.240 --> 00:15:27.300 I am going to rotate that all the way around, look just off the coast of Peru and Ecuador. 00:15:27.300 --> 00:15:29.520 Do you see all that blue? 00:15:29.520 --> 00:15:33.840 That's essentially colder than normal water temperatures associated with what? 00:15:35.580 --> 00:15:37.320 We are currently in a what right now? 00:15:37.920 --> 00:15:38.880 A La Niña. 00:15:38.880 --> 00:15:43.020 La Niña means colder than normal or neutral conditions in terms 00:15:43.020 --> 00:15:44.640 of water temperature across the Pacific,  00:15:44.640 --> 00:15:47.460 and that has consequences  for the global circulation. 00:15:48.060 --> 00:15:52.980 We know that El Niño is actually one of the dominant drivers in terms of understanding 00:15:53.700 --> 00:15:57.300 the variability in weather and climate that we have across the globe. 00:15:57.300 --> 00:15:59.760 The Tropics really do dominate that forcing, 00:16:00.540 --> 00:16:04.980 so you can see right now this is a beautiful representation of what looked like... 00:16:04.980 --> 00:16:06.840 what looks like baroclinic instability, 00:16:06.840 --> 00:16:12.660 these Kelvin waves in the water that are distributed in an easterly fashion. 00:16:12.660 --> 00:16:14.760 Remember, the tropics have easterly winds, 00:16:14.760 --> 00:16:16.620 so the mid-latitudes you are  kind of seeing everything  00:16:16.620 --> 00:16:19.380 go westerly, but the trade wind easterlies, 00:16:19.380 --> 00:16:23.880 unless you have something like a westerly wind burst or something like that, that's... 00:16:23.880 --> 00:16:30.360 generally you can see that water is flowing from east to west, so we say easterly motion. 00:16:30.360 --> 00:16:33.120 It is pretty warm over the maritime continent right now. 00:16:33.120 --> 00:16:35.160 We have had a lot of convection in that area. 00:16:35.160 --> 00:16:38.700 Of course, we had the typhoon that's recurving right now northward, 00:16:38.700 --> 00:16:42.180 that should make landfall later this weekend. 00:16:42.180 --> 00:16:46.440 Thankfully it is weakening pretty significantly over the last 24 hours. 00:16:46.440 --> 00:16:50.760 We will keep an eye on that, and then, of course, we can monitor things like climate change, right? 00:16:50.760 --> 00:16:55.020 We can look at future projections of temperature, water temperature on Science on a Sphere. 00:16:55.620 --> 00:16:59.340 And if you look -- if you  kind of aggregate up all of  00:16:59.340 --> 00:17:01.260 the water temperature and compare the anomalies, 00:17:01.260 --> 00:17:06.720 we are running about a 1 Celsius, 2 Celsius fever right now when compared to the last 30 years, 00:17:06.720 --> 00:17:09.300 so there is a definitely a climate change component of that. 00:17:10.140 --> 00:17:12.780 If you follow this anomaly over the last 15 to 20 years, 00:17:12.780 --> 00:17:14.820 you can see marked increases in water temperature. 00:17:14.820 --> 00:17:16.860 It is not just the land, right. 00:17:16.860 --> 00:17:18.660 We have to watch water temperature as well. 00:17:18.660 --> 00:17:22.620 The waters... the water especially because it stores a lot more energy. 00:17:22.620 --> 00:17:25.140 It stores a lot more heat  content than the land does, 00:17:25.140 --> 00:17:28.800 so the fingerprint to me of climate change is not so much in the air temperature. 00:17:28.800 --> 00:17:31.080 It is certainly there, but  it is really the global ocean  00:17:31.080 --> 00:17:33.900 water temperatures that are so much more prevalent 00:17:33.900 --> 00:17:35.340 when you look at things like climate change. 00:17:35.340 --> 00:17:39.300 Other atmospheric properties, of course, ozone. 00:17:39.300 --> 00:17:42.780 When you talk about the ozone hole, this is primarily going to be something 00:17:42.780 --> 00:17:46.560 where you are looking at Northern or Southern Hemisphere, maybe Southern Hemisphere, 00:17:46.560 --> 00:17:48.300 especially Antarctica in general. 00:17:48.300 --> 00:17:50.520 We have climate models, right? 00:17:50.520 --> 00:17:55.860 Climate models are basically at the atmospheric or climate scientist's way to perform experiments. 00:17:56.520 --> 00:17:57.780 We don't have a spare Earth. 00:17:57.780 --> 00:18:00.720 We can't just fly to it and conduct an experiment, right, so what do we do? 00:18:00.720 --> 00:18:02.400 We recreate the Earth inside of a computer, 00:18:02.400 --> 00:18:08.640 so these projections, you can see at the time, we are going from 2050, 2020, all the way to 2100. 00:18:08.640 --> 00:18:10.020 We run these models. 00:18:10.020 --> 00:18:16.680 These are basically our way to conduct planetary experiments, and so you are looking at here, 00:18:16.680 --> 00:18:22.680 the projected precipitation change through time, and it is under a very, very specific experiment. 00:18:22.680 --> 00:18:29.820 You see SSP1 on this side, and I am going to rotate this around just so you can see. 00:18:29.820 --> 00:18:32.640 When you see SSP1, that's basically a pathway. 00:18:32.640 --> 00:18:40.020 This is a potential pathway that we might take as humans in terms of our emissions of CO2. 00:18:40.020 --> 00:18:43.980 You can see actually there at the bottom the changes in CO2 that happen 00:18:43.980 --> 00:18:50.220 throughout the course of the years in parts per million, so as we continue to emit fossil fuels, 00:18:50.220 --> 00:18:55.260 specifically the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, the changes in the parts per million, 00:18:55.260 --> 00:19:01.560 basically the atmospheric composition of carbon dioxide and the associated projected changes 00:19:01.560 --> 00:19:07.140 in precipitation that we will see, this is just one model, one pathway, one projection. 00:19:07.140 --> 00:19:12.180 We have hundreds of these different climate models, lots of different pathways to look at, 00:19:12.180 --> 00:19:16.200 to give us really abroad perspective of how things might change in the future 00:19:16.200 --> 00:19:19.380 if we stay on various pathways. 00:19:19.380 --> 00:19:21.540 We can look at -- I said historical events. 00:19:21.540 --> 00:19:21.960 Look at this. 00:19:21.960 --> 00:19:24.060 You want to see the opposite of La Niña. 00:19:24.060 --> 00:19:28.740 Here is the 1997-98 El Niño. 00:19:28.740 --> 00:19:33.180 You'll want to focus here specifically on the water temperatures across the Pacific. 00:19:34.500 --> 00:19:38.700 It doesn't have a scale on here, but this was what was called a super-Niño event. 00:19:38.700 --> 00:19:45.240 It had big implications for weather and climate across the globe during the winter of '97-'98, 00:19:45.780 --> 00:19:49.440 lots of tropical convection focused over that warmer water, 00:19:49.440 --> 00:19:51.360 so we had lots of thunderstorm activity that 00:19:51.360 --> 00:19:54.540 basically altered the jetstream in the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere, 00:19:54.540 --> 00:20:00.480 and there were big implications for weather and climate events in '97 and '98. 00:20:00.480 --> 00:20:03.180 We can look at -- I said, forecast. 00:20:03.180 --> 00:20:04.320 This is pretty cool. 00:20:04.320 --> 00:20:07.320 This is actually one of my favorite things to look at on the sphere, 00:20:07.320 --> 00:20:12.300 and let me get something a little more maybe aesthetically pleasing, 00:20:13.740 --> 00:20:18.120 so pause, not only do we want to look at, right, what is happening now, 00:20:18.120 --> 00:20:21.720 but what is the forecast going to be like for tonight's football game, 00:20:21.720 --> 00:20:24.540 or what is the forecast going to be like for this weekend? 00:20:24.540 --> 00:20:29.280 We are looking at 500 millibars here, so about halfway up in at the atmosphere in terms of mass, 00:20:29.280 --> 00:20:33.180 and we can use the frame slider to actually go into the future. 00:20:33.180 --> 00:20:34.920 Look at how the date is changing. 00:20:35.460 --> 00:20:38.460 Today is the 1st, so we can move out towards this weekend, 00:20:38.460 --> 00:20:41.880 and we can look at these conditions in the middle of the atmosphere. 00:20:41.880 --> 00:20:43.260 You can put temperature on here. 00:20:43.260 --> 00:20:45.060 You can put precipitation on here. 00:20:45.600 --> 00:20:51.840 I am going to rotate -- well, maybe -- I am going to get – 00:20:51.840 --> 00:20:55.920 I am going to put North America sort of in our view over here by the camera. 00:20:56.640 --> 00:21:00.720 Maybe we can just talk about what is happening as we move into the weekend. 00:21:00.720 --> 00:21:03.840 Notice the big ridge, right, of high pressure. 00:21:03.840 --> 00:21:04.620 Do you all see that? 00:21:04.620 --> 00:21:06.600 I am going to try to move here just a second with my cord. 00:21:06.600 --> 00:21:08.640 Look at the big buckle in the Jetstream. 00:21:08.640 --> 00:21:12.480 We have this big what is called roller-coaster ridge over the western United States. 00:21:12.480 --> 00:21:18.600 This is creating extreme drought and heat conditions across North American west right now. 00:21:18.600 --> 00:21:21.060 They already have major  issues out there with water, 00:21:21.060 --> 00:21:24.960 if you have been following Lake Mead at record low levels. 00:21:24.960 --> 00:21:26.760 We are kind of in the middle  of the desert southwest  00:21:26.760 --> 00:21:29.640 monsoon, and hopefully this  little system right here, 00:21:29.640 --> 00:21:30.180 notice that   00:21:30.180 --> 00:21:35.640 little disturbance 500 millibars off of the coast of the Baja will bring some moisture up 00:21:35.640 --> 00:21:39.060 into the desert southwest to get some rainfall. 00:21:39.060 --> 00:21:41.700 But look at how that jetstream stays north, right,  00:21:41.700 --> 00:21:44.640 places like Las Vegas,  Phoenix, Southern California, 00:21:44.640 --> 00:21:50.100 unless that tropical system brings some moisture down there are going to remain really hot, 00:21:50.100 --> 00:21:52.620 really dry through the weekend. 00:21:52.620 --> 00:21:55.860 And if you look at our  forecast, as we move into the  00:21:55.860 --> 00:21:57.960 middle of next week, this is now September 8th, 00:21:57.960 --> 00:22:02.460 so a little bit out into the future, the jetstream is still very, very far north, 00:22:02.460 --> 00:22:06.000 well up into Canada with a  kind of a ridge positioned  00:22:06.000 --> 00:22:07.680 over the Central Plains of the United States. 00:22:07.680 --> 00:22:10.440 That's going to keep us  relatively seasonably warm, 00:22:10.440 --> 00:22:16.200 maybe also seasonably dry unless we can get some disturbances over the top of that ridge. 00:22:16.200 --> 00:22:19.980 Overall, this is a pretty quiet pattern for the United States. 00:22:19.980 --> 00:22:23.400 We don't see any tropical systems impacting the United States. 00:22:24.540 --> 00:22:28.440 I am going to spin this around the for the other students on their side to see what I am showing. 00:22:28.440 --> 00:22:30.060 All are you seeing in the Southern Hemisphere over  00:22:30.060 --> 00:22:32.100 here, probably really  confused at what I am saying, 00:22:32.100 --> 00:22:36.840 but off the coast, look at hurricane that is it projected by the middle of next week, 00:22:36.840 --> 00:22:38.940 that is going to be basically out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 00:22:38.940 --> 00:22:41.160 should not pose any threat to the United States, 00:22:41.160 --> 00:22:46.200 but that's what that little doughnut feature is over the Atlantic, mostly a quiet pattern though, 00:22:46.200 --> 00:22:48.480 unless you are in the Pacific  northwest, opportunities  00:22:48.480 --> 00:22:53.040 for some precipitation  there, overall fairly quiet. 00:22:53.040 --> 00:22:56.100 This is actually probably  the most realistic way to  00:22:56.100 --> 00:22:58.620 look at future projections  of weather and forecast. 00:22:58.620 --> 00:23:01.500 This is from NOA's GFS Model. 00:23:01.500 --> 00:23:04.500 Let's go ahead and look at future clouds. 00:23:06.360 --> 00:23:11.280 So this weekend, forecasted  through GFS, this is... 00:23:11.280 --> 00:23:14.520 let's see, this would be Saturday afternoon, just  00:23:14.520 --> 00:23:17.100 some light clouds across  the Northern Illinois area. 00:23:17.100 --> 00:23:20.220 Look at the broad area of  high pressure, no clouds at  00:23:20.220 --> 00:23:22.740 all forecasted from the GFS  Model over North America 00:23:22.740 --> 00:23:26.640 and most of Canada on the afternoon of Saturday. 00:23:27.480 --> 00:23:30.600 Look at the plume of the tropical moisture that is coming in, 00:23:30.600 --> 00:23:33.960 still a lot of flooding being dealt with along the Gulf Coast this week, 00:23:33.960 --> 00:23:36.600 and you can see all of the clouds associated with that precipitation. 00:23:36.600 --> 00:23:38.760 Look at the forecast from the GFS. 00:23:38.760 --> 00:23:40.260 There is your hurricane system. 00:23:40.860 --> 00:23:44.700 That would be hurricane Danielle, so that would be named Danielle. 00:23:45.660 --> 00:23:47.760 If we get... if it achieves  status... it looks like  00:23:47.760 --> 00:23:49.560 it definitely will based on the GFS forecast, 00:23:50.940 --> 00:23:55.380 so that would be tropical storm potentially or Hurricane Danielle depending on its strength, 00:23:55.380 --> 00:23:57.900 and then towards the middle of the run next week, 00:23:57.900 --> 00:24:01.020 look at the tropical system that develops over the Baja. 00:24:01.020 --> 00:24:04.440 GFS has it forecasted to  develop a clear eye before  00:24:04.440 --> 00:24:06.420 impacting the southern portions of the Baja, 00:24:06.420 --> 00:24:11.040 and look at all of that moisture that streams up northward into Arizona and portions of New Mexico. 00:24:11.040 --> 00:24:16.080 You will have to watch for a potential flooding event at the middle or end of next week 00:24:16.080 --> 00:24:20.520 if all of that moisture does come on shore as forecasted by the GFS. 00:24:20.520 --> 00:24:23.880 Next opportunity for clouds here and maybe stormy weather, 00:24:23.880 --> 00:24:29.520 you can see maybe some moisture there associated with that remnant gulf activity, 00:24:29.520 --> 00:24:31.680 that was occurring earlier this week, 00:24:32.640 --> 00:24:37.260 so clouds are forecasted to move in on the afternoon/morning of the 6th, 00:24:37.260 --> 00:24:41.520 and, right, a really cool way to visualize what is happening. 00:24:41.520 --> 00:24:46.680 In fact, the GFS even forecasts that moisture associated with the storm in the East Pacific 00:24:46.680 --> 00:24:52.740 does get all the way up into the Midwest by -- after next week, 00:24:52.740 --> 00:24:57.300 so the 12th would be as we go in towards early portion of the following week. 00:24:57.300 --> 00:25:00.240 So really cool way, and maybe one of my favorites. 00:25:00.240 --> 00:25:02.160 This is the last one I will show you from the GFS, 00:25:02.940 --> 00:25:05.940 looking at precipitable  water, this is basically how  00:25:05.940 --> 00:25:08.400 much moisture content is in the atmosphere. 00:25:08.400 --> 00:25:10.560 From top to bottom, vertically  integrated quantity,  00:25:10.560 --> 00:25:12.420 so we are looking at basically vapor, 00:25:13.260 --> 00:25:15.180 how much water vapor would you have in the column 00:25:15.180 --> 00:25:18.300 if you condensed everything out at one given time-frame? 00:25:19.440 --> 00:25:23.580 And so what this really allows to us do is track that variable gas, right? 00:25:23.580 --> 00:25:27.240 The most important variable gas on our planet is not carbon dioxide. 00:25:27.240 --> 00:25:28.500 It is not methane. 00:25:28.500 --> 00:25:29.820 It is the water vapor. 00:25:29.820 --> 00:25:32.940 Water vapor is the one that  allows us... allows the  00:25:32.940 --> 00:25:35.760 Earth's physics and dynamics  to produce precipitation, 00:25:35.760 --> 00:25:41.400 and this is a great way -- this is forecasted, so we are not looking at realtime – 00:25:41.400 --> 00:25:45.180 this is a great way for us  to watch and track that very  00:25:45.180 --> 00:25:48.780 important variable gas that  often brings us precipitation. 00:25:48.780 --> 00:25:52.680 You will see, it is, you know, much, much greater in the tropics as would you probably expect, 00:25:52.680 --> 00:25:57.720 but we can look at things like atmospheric rivers, we can look at precipitating systems. 00:25:57.720 --> 00:25:59.460 Hurricanes will always show up. 00:25:59.460 --> 00:26:01.980 There may be even easier to  see in precipitable water  00:26:01.980 --> 00:26:06.660 plots, so I am going to  spin over here in our view. 00:26:06.660 --> 00:26:10.680 We will take a look at Danielle  or potentially Danielle 00:26:10.680 --> 00:26:17.280 and notice how these tropical systems look when you are looking at precipitable water. 00:26:17.280 --> 00:26:20.460 They are basically a little  bright spot, a little anomaly,  00:26:20.460 --> 00:26:22.800 almost as were looking a Jupiter's red spot, 00:26:22.800 --> 00:26:25.980 only in this case is a blob  of precipitable water, and  00:26:25.980 --> 00:26:28.980 you can see how Danielle  is forecast to recurve out 00:26:28.980 --> 00:26:32.940 into The Atlantic and really not pose any threat to the United States. 00:26:32.940 --> 00:26:35.460 Although as you get to the  end of the run, look at that  00:26:35.460 --> 00:26:39.420 next system that has a much more westerly track, 00:26:39.420 --> 00:26:42.300 it is a little bit farther north, I would say. 00:26:43.200 --> 00:26:46.980 When you start to get worried about potential landfalling systems in the U.S., 00:26:46.980 --> 00:26:48.540 they kind of start from two areas. 00:26:48.540 --> 00:26:50.040 There either going to start from the Gulf. 00:26:50.040 --> 00:26:53.700 They're going to be what we call "home grown" in the Gulf and maybe come north, 00:26:53.700 --> 00:26:59.400 or they are going to take a track that essentially brings them in very close to the Lesser Antilles, 00:26:59.400 --> 00:27:04.260 so about that latitude right down here. 00:27:04.260 --> 00:27:07.260 You can see The Lesser Antilles there just to the east of Puerto Rico. 00:27:07.260 --> 00:27:10.380 They do have that track and the steering conditions are right, 00:27:10.380 --> 00:27:13.200 they are often take maybe one of three paths. 00:27:13.200 --> 00:27:15.240 If they are a little bit  on the northern side, they  00:27:15.240 --> 00:27:18.000 might be a threat to Bermuda or the Bahamas. 00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:21.780 Sometimes they impact Puerto  Rico, Hurricane Maria. 00:27:21.780 --> 00:27:25.440 Sometimes they come in, they play what is called... I like to call it cricket. 00:27:25.440 --> 00:27:27.420 They come in between the wickets. 00:27:27.420 --> 00:27:29.100 They will come in very close to Jamaica 00:27:29.100 --> 00:27:33.240 and through the Yucatán Peninsula on the east side or west side of Cuba, 00:27:33.240 --> 00:27:35.700 and then if they get into the Gulf of Mexico this time of the year, 00:27:35.700 --> 00:27:40.020 water temperatures are often bath water this time of year with the Gulf of Mexico 00:27:40.020 --> 00:27:43.200 being a much shallower body of water, especially as you get towards the coast line. 00:27:44.040 --> 00:27:49.320 Any storm that can get into the Gulf of Mexico in September or August with the right wind shear 00:27:49.320 --> 00:27:52.560 can often become a major hurricane if the conditions are right. 00:27:52.560 --> 00:27:56.070 You can look at -- this is really cool -- you can look at old hurricanes. 00:27:56.070 --> 00:27:57.900 Do you want to look at Hurricane Irma? 00:27:58.980 --> 00:28:02.400 This is from GO 16, so we are only going to have half of the Earth here. 00:28:03.000 --> 00:28:09.660 This is actual real data, so this not some sort of simulation. 00:28:10.620 --> 00:28:12.000 This is amazing. 00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:18.060 If you were sitting on the International Space Station on September 6th, 2017, 00:28:18.060 --> 00:28:21.120 this is what you basically would be seeing with your eye during the day. 00:28:21.120 --> 00:28:22.620 At night, of course, you  are not going to be able to  00:28:22.620 --> 00:28:25.140 see this, but with false  imagery color, IR at night, 00:28:25.140 --> 00:28:28.800 but this is what you would see with the cones in your eyes. 00:28:28.800 --> 00:28:30.180 You would interpret these colors. 00:28:32.460 --> 00:28:35.520 When you begin to watch Science on a Sphere, 00:28:35.520 --> 00:28:43.080 especially these storms that from the ground seem so large, you realize how small they really are, 00:28:43.080 --> 00:28:47.220 especially hurricanes in relation to extratropical systems. 00:28:47.220 --> 00:28:50.280 Look how much smaller, right, 00:28:50.280 --> 00:28:56.280 Irma is compared to the these large extra tropical systems that are happening further north. 00:28:56.280 --> 00:28:58.140 They are much smaller. 00:28:58.140 --> 00:28:59.580 They are warm-core systems. 00:28:59.580 --> 00:29:01.140 They are not cold-core systems. 00:29:01.140 --> 00:29:02.880 They are processes. 00:29:03.540 --> 00:29:05.100 Their longevity and the way that 00:29:05.100 --> 00:29:07.080 they form their dynamics are completely different  00:29:07.080 --> 00:29:10.140 than extratropical systems,  and I think if anything, 00:29:10.140 --> 00:29:12.420 it just realizes, you know,  when you look at the entire  00:29:12.420 --> 00:29:14.580 Science on a Sphere you realize how small you are. 00:29:15.120 --> 00:29:18.000 You are one little tiny dot, right, one latitude 00:29:18.000 --> 00:29:21.720 and longitude on this entire sphere that can seem so massive. 00:29:21.720 --> 00:29:24.240 We have other hurricane seasons, all kinds of cool stuff. 00:29:24.240 --> 00:29:25.380 We have Katrina on here. 00:29:25.380 --> 00:29:30.720 We can look at some neat stuff, but, yeah, any questions or anything that you might want to see? 00:29:30.720 --> 00:29:33.360 I can probably search for some stuff on here. Ben? 00:29:33.360 --> 00:29:37.166 [STUDENT] Going back to like the visible, like, what it is on right now -- 00:29:37.166 --> 00:29:40.680 [GENSINI] Yeah. I will move it over to you so you can see Irma as well. 00:29:40.680 --> 00:29:43.320 [STUDENT] -- but going back to like the current visible, 00:29:43.320 --> 00:29:46.910 I mean, that you can see kind of sections where the frame rate is really nice -- 00:29:46.910 --> 00:29:47.743 [GENSINI] Yep. 00:29:47.743 --> 00:29:49.260 [STUDENT] -- and the other  frame rate is really slow. 00:29:49.260 --> 00:29:53.520 Does that just have to do with the difference in, like, satellite that is giving us that image? 00:29:53.520 --> 00:29:59.400 [GENSINI] Yeah, so over the continental United States, a smaller sector, 00:29:59.400 --> 00:30:01.740 we are taking five-minute scans. 00:30:01.740 --> 00:30:07.260 Over the entire full disc you only get every 15 minutes, so when you put that together in a movie, 00:30:07.260 --> 00:30:11.640 it is like you are looking at a very fluid movie in part of the domain, 00:30:11.640 --> 00:30:13.920 and the edge of the domain  takes a while to catch up. 00:30:13.920 --> 00:30:18.840 All right. Because these satellites have multiple spectral channels on them, multiple sensors, 00:30:19.560 --> 00:30:24.300 so what will essentially happen is every 15 minutes the satellite completes. 00:30:24.300 --> 00:30:26.520 It is like a game of Pac Man almost. 00:30:26.520 --> 00:30:28.920 The satellite basically scans like this, right, 00:30:28.920 --> 00:30:33.240 and then all of a sudden at 15 minutes it is done, and it starts that scan again. 00:30:33.240 --> 00:30:39.060 However with another sensor, as that 15-minute scan is going, it is going to a certain sector. 00:30:39.060 --> 00:30:43.920 We have mesoscale sectors that scan every one minute over the continental United States, 00:30:43.920 --> 00:30:45.900 one of the sensors goes,  okay, I am going to go get  00:30:45.900 --> 00:30:48.000 the conus, and then I have  to go do something else, 00:30:48.000 --> 00:30:50.940 and then I am going to come back and do the conus, and it will do that every five minutes, 00:30:50.940 --> 00:30:53.940 and so part of the imagery, right, that you are  00:30:53.940 --> 00:30:57.300 seeing is that five-minute  or one-minute frame rate, 00:30:57.300 --> 00:30:59.340 depending on where the mesoscale sectors are, 00:30:59.340 --> 00:31:02.820 and the broad full-disc imagery that you are seeing is every 15 minutes, 00:31:02.820 --> 00:31:10.200 so, yes, it would be a lot of data to do like five-minute full-disc imagery, 00:31:10.200 --> 00:31:14.640 but I guarantee you as we go forward and we get better and better satellites, better technology, 00:31:14.640 --> 00:31:18.900 we will see probably one-minute full-disc imagery at some point during our lifetime. 00:31:18.900 --> 00:31:20.040 That's a great question. 00:31:20.760 --> 00:31:24.420 There is a catalog, um, you know, if you are a graduate student 00:31:24.420 --> 00:31:28.740 and you have a great research project and you create this beautiful map, send it to me. 00:31:28.740 --> 00:31:33.060 We can probably create a KML file out of it and visualize it on Science on a Sphere. 00:31:33.060 --> 00:31:36.120 You GIS folks in the audience, I have seen your maps before. 00:31:36.120 --> 00:31:36.780 They are great. 00:31:36.780 --> 00:31:40.740 Just convert it to a KML file, and we can put it on Science on a Sphere, 00:31:40.740 --> 00:31:44.940 so there is a limited archive that is available through NOA. 00:31:45.840 --> 00:31:47.280 Um, is this kind of cool. 00:31:47.280 --> 00:31:48.540 I am going to pull this up while we are talking. 00:31:48.540 --> 00:31:53.460 This is realtime water vapor... no, not realtime -- sorry, archive. 00:31:53.460 --> 00:31:55.920 I am until the archive channel now, so there is archive. 00:31:55.920 --> 00:31:58.020 There is... I got to get all of these right. 00:31:58.020 --> 00:32:01.920 There is different spots, but basically you can import certain archived events. 00:32:01.920 --> 00:32:04.380 Usually they are hurricanes  or things that are a little  00:32:04.380 --> 00:32:06.660 bit easy to interpret from far away on a sphere. 00:32:07.800 --> 00:32:11.100 Um, and then you can go, of course, to realtime mode. 00:32:11.100 --> 00:32:14.940 So we have realtime visible imagery, realtime water vapor, realtime IR. 00:32:14.940 --> 00:32:17.340 There is stuff from the NASA trim satellite. 00:32:17.340 --> 00:32:23.670 This is an old simulation from the mid-2000s, um, looking at – 00:32:23.670 --> 00:32:28.950 I believe, this is just simulated water vapor imagery, um, from Geos 5, 00:32:28.950 --> 00:32:31.920 so this is one of NASA's  polar orbiting satellites, 00:32:31.920 --> 00:32:35.940 so there is a lot of different things that you can do in terms of the catalog. 00:32:35.940 --> 00:32:38.220 The realtime stuff is probably my favorite because  00:32:38.220 --> 00:32:40.740 you could literally walk over  here with a class, right, 00:32:40.740 --> 00:32:44.460 and we can do a realtime forecast briefing on Science on a Sphere 00:32:44.460 --> 00:32:46.020 because we do have the model data as well. 00:32:46.020 --> 00:32:47.460 We can do the projections into the future. 00:32:48.240 --> 00:32:53.400 So since the Earth is a sphere, when you move above the Earth's surface, 00:32:53.400 --> 00:32:55.200 so you are not touching the  Earth's surface, but you  00:32:55.200 --> 00:32:58.620 are what is called "a  freestanding observer," let say, 00:32:58.620 --> 00:33:00.480 okay, so kind of what we are doing right now. 00:33:01.080 --> 00:33:04.200 If you were to travel, let's say you want... I am going to stop it right here. 00:33:05.160 --> 00:33:11.460 All right? You and I are over top of Australia, and we want to fly to – 00:33:11.460 --> 00:33:15.840 let's say we want to fly to Japan, which is -- can you see it up there? 00:33:15.840 --> 00:33:16.740 It is basically due north. 00:33:18.960 --> 00:33:24.660 If we take off right now and fly straight up towards Japan in a straight line, 00:33:24.660 --> 00:33:25.560 are we going to make it there? 00:33:26.720 --> 00:33:30.900 [STUDENT] Uh, I don't know. 00:33:31.908 --> 00:33:35.040 [GENSINI] Right. That's -- this is the whole point of the Coriolis force. 00:33:35.040 --> 00:33:39.660 If we were to take off right now and go straight, guess what? 00:33:39.660 --> 00:33:41.940 We missed our target to the left, didn't we? 00:33:41.940 --> 00:33:44.820 Oh, why did we miss it to the left? 00:33:44.820 --> 00:33:48.360 Because the Earth rotated away from us. 00:33:48.360 --> 00:33:51.780 So we say then in the Northern Hemisphere, 00:33:52.680 --> 00:33:56.520 when we are traveling as long as we are not traveling along a line of latitude, 00:33:56.520 --> 00:33:58.920 as long as we are crossing latitude, there is this  00:33:58.920 --> 00:34:02.400 apparent deflection that  happens to either the right 00:34:02.400 --> 00:34:07.080 of the intended path or if you are in the Southern Hemisphere to the left of the intended path. 00:34:07.080 --> 00:34:09.120 It is all because of the Earth is a sphere, and it is rotating, 00:34:09.120 --> 00:34:10.980 so there is this apparent deflection that happens. 00:34:10.980 --> 00:34:13.740 That was actually a really good question for a non-atmosphere. 00:34:13.740 --> 00:34:14.580 I love it. 00:34:16.380 --> 00:34:18.660 All right. Let me see, so this is kind of cool. 00:34:18.660 --> 00:34:21.060 This is just a little control panel for anybody who is using it. 00:34:21.060 --> 00:34:24.420 We have... there is an  archived or realtime catalog. 00:34:24.420 --> 00:34:27.840 I can control the axes, so I can pause, right. 00:34:27.840 --> 00:34:33.240 I can rotate on what is called the Z-axis, so I can rotate basically on the North/South Pole. 00:34:33.240 --> 00:34:37.860 I can rotate on the... what would be basically the  00:34:37.860 --> 00:34:41.100 Equator axis, and then I  have basically control to do, 00:34:41.100 --> 00:34:43.620 you know, to put anything  in frame that we want to. 00:34:43.620 --> 00:34:48.300 I can simulate through the  entire loop, fast-forward,  00:34:48.300 --> 00:34:51.660 and there is also kind of  movies that you can play. 00:34:51.660 --> 00:34:56.580 So if somebody creates like a Science on a Sphere movie that has audio, that narrates, 00:34:56.580 --> 00:35:02.760 you can actually just sit here and watch, you know, a simulated podcast, 00:35:02.760 --> 00:35:05.880 if you will, about Earth on these types of things. 00:35:05.880 --> 00:35:07.140 That might be a really cool thing. 00:35:07.140 --> 00:35:13.320 Fred, knock that... write that down somewhere, an idea, "Podcast of Science on a Sphere." 00:35:14.040 --> 00:35:14.640 So, yeah. 00:35:14.640 --> 00:35:17.220 Again, I wish I could show you the whole catalog, 00:35:17.220 --> 00:35:20.220 but if you go on-line and just search "Science on a Sphere," 00:35:20.220 --> 00:35:23.220 you will see all of the different layers that you can provide, 00:35:23.220 --> 00:35:27.960 realtime stuff of course that is coming from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 00:35:27.960 --> 00:35:32.700 but also the... just the static stuff. 00:35:33.240 --> 00:35:37.740 This is actually a research paper that was published by folks at NASA several years ago. 00:35:38.340 --> 00:35:39.900 I am not going to tell what you this is. 00:35:39.900 --> 00:35:43.080 I am just going to let somebody guess what you are looking at. 00:35:43.080 --> 00:35:44.580 I am not going to tell you the units. 00:35:44.580 --> 00:35:46.560 I mean, you can see the scale there. 00:35:46.560 --> 00:35:48.720 It ranges from .1 to 70. 00:35:48.720 --> 00:35:51.240 I am not going to tell you what it is. 00:35:51.240 --> 00:35:52.500 I am going to if you can guess. 00:35:53.460 --> 00:35:54.106 [STUDENT] I have a guess. 00:35:54.106 --> 00:35:54.632 [GENSINI] You have a guess? Yes? 00:35:54.631 --> 00:35:55.217 [STUDENT] Like a lightning strike? 00:35:55.217 --> 00:36:00.420 [GENSINI] Global lightning strike climatology, yep, so the hotter the colors, the reds, 00:36:00.420 --> 00:36:03.360 the dark reds and the  blacks, those are essentially  00:36:03.360 --> 00:36:04.980 where we see more lightning strikes. 00:36:06.060 --> 00:36:09.540 The purples, the blues, and certainly the white are where we see the fewest, 00:36:09.540 --> 00:36:13.320 so right away it jumps out to you we see more lightning strikes over land, right, 00:36:13.320 --> 00:36:15.600 and we perhaps see at least in the United States, 00:36:15.600 --> 00:36:21.900 if I pause this, we see the most number of lightning strikes right over Disney. 00:36:21.900 --> 00:36:25.740 Florida is the thunderstorm capitol of the United States, but the thunderstorm activity, right, 00:36:25.740 --> 00:36:27.780 generally decreases in the  United States as you get  00:36:27.780 --> 00:36:29.580 away from the moisture  source or the Gulf of Mexico, 00:36:29.580 --> 00:36:33.240 we see far fewer number of  lightning strikes, right, 00:36:33.240 --> 00:36:37.920 as I rotate this around in places like Seattle and places like California. 00:36:37.920 --> 00:36:42.360 The conditions there for thunderstorms are just much, much harder to get 00:36:42.360 --> 00:36:44.640 than there in the central  and southeast United States. 00:36:45.360 --> 00:36:48.420 Global lightning capitol of the world though is not United States. 00:36:48.420 --> 00:36:55.380 As you can see, Central Africa is off the charts, if I can rotate this properly. 00:36:55.920 --> 00:36:57.000 I will spin this around. 00:36:57.000 --> 00:37:00.000 You will see the black and  even the white activity. 00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:02.820 We see the most number of  thunderstorms every year,   00:37:02.820 --> 00:37:05.460 at least lightning strikes over Central Africa. 00:37:05.460 --> 00:37:07.620 I have no idea what this sphere is made of. 00:37:07.620 --> 00:37:13.530 I would assume it is a hollow shelled something covered in white nylon. 00:37:13.530 --> 00:37:13.860 [Laughter]. 00:37:13.860 --> 00:37:15.300 I am not really sure. 00:37:15.300 --> 00:37:20.700 I can say the projector system though is very similar to what we would have to do 00:37:20.700 --> 00:37:28.200 with satellites in geostationary orbit, okay, except that these projectors are stationary. 00:37:28.200 --> 00:37:32.880 If you wanted to create a geostationary, one would have to have a camera on a track, 00:37:32.880 --> 00:37:39.120 that goes around the Science on a Sphere as the Science on a Sphere rotates, and even then, right, 00:37:39.120 --> 00:37:41.940 you would only be lighting  up one side of the sphere. 00:37:41.940 --> 00:37:48.240 With four projectors that are stationary, you can at least light up that half, 00:37:48.240 --> 00:37:52.080 but blend it and focus it  in 25 percent of that sphere  00:37:52.080 --> 00:37:54.660 such that you are at least  getting proper projection. 00:37:54.660 --> 00:38:00.135 You could probably add more spheres if you wanted to, but with four you get an adequate, 00:38:00.135 --> 00:38:04.260 nondistorted view, what is called basically a "true view" of that spherical projection. 00:38:04.260 --> 00:38:06.180 You can't do it with two projections, right? 00:38:06.180 --> 00:38:10.680 We would only be lighting up half of the sphere if we are using 25 percent cones, 00:38:10.680 --> 00:38:14.520 and you can't do it with just two because if you had just two, 00:38:14.520 --> 00:38:18.780 the corners of the images would look a lot like what we see on visible satellite imagery. 00:38:18.780 --> 00:38:21.900 They would be very distorted  at the edges of those, 00:38:21.900 --> 00:38:24.780 so with four you get, you know, kind of the best of everything. 00:38:25.740 --> 00:38:29.700 And I just see they added up -- it pops up when they add new datasets. 00:38:31.020 --> 00:38:32.160 Oh, it says, "Missing data." 00:38:32.160 --> 00:38:36.900 It must not be -- they have the huge Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption of 2022. 00:38:36.900 --> 00:38:41.160 You can see the pressure waves that propagate across the air, so that's really cool. 00:38:41.160 --> 00:38:49.500 I literally only went through a very, very small part of the data catalog. 00:38:49.500 --> 00:38:51.060 I think I actually mentioned this once. 00:38:51.060 --> 00:38:54.660 Where are all of the global  flights occurring right now? 00:38:54.660 --> 00:39:01.380 So here is an example of, if you have seen websites like Flight Radar 24 or Flight Aware, 00:39:01.380 --> 00:39:05.520 where you can track your flight, again, you are tracking it on a map, 00:39:06.120 --> 00:39:10.860 you can use the RDSB desponder data that is on all commercial aircraft 00:39:10.860 --> 00:39:16.200 and most private aircraft to track flight, and that's exactly what we are doing here. 00:39:17.760 --> 00:39:21.900 So you can do this in realtime or in historical... just look at flight patterns, 00:39:21.900 --> 00:39:26.940 you can see flights that are coming across the Pacific, the typical red-eye flights. 00:39:27.480 --> 00:39:28.740 This is obviously time lapsed. 00:39:28.740 --> 00:39:34.800 They don't go that fast in real life, so it is sped up a little bit just to make it visual, 00:39:34.800 --> 00:39:38.880 but if you watch things like Flight Radar, right, you know how fast those aircraft move with time, 00:39:38.880 --> 00:39:42.720 so this is just an example of how much air traffic we have over the United States. 00:39:42.720 --> 00:39:43.320 Look at that. 00:39:43.320 --> 00:39:47.880 It is unbelievable on any given day, if you have ever pulled up Flight Radar 24 00:39:47.880 --> 00:39:51.660 and watched the number of flights over the United States on any given day, it is just remarkable. 00:39:51.660 --> 00:39:54.420 And believe it or not, all of those commercial  00:39:54.420 --> 00:39:57.600 aircraft are actually fitted  with instrument sensors 00:39:59.160 --> 00:40:03.600 to take temperature readings, humidity readings and from there GPS altitude, 00:40:03.600 --> 00:40:05.160 they can calculate wind speed and wind direction, 00:40:05.160 --> 00:40:08.640 and those are actually assimilated into our numerical weather models. 00:40:08.640 --> 00:40:12.120 They help us forecast, right, because we don't have a lot of data over the ocean. 00:40:12.120 --> 00:40:15.360 Unless someone is on an island launching weather balloons to give us 00:40:15.360 --> 00:40:19.140 that vertical profile of the conditions, we don't have that data. 00:40:19.140 --> 00:40:22.440 We rely on satellite and  the best in situ data that  00:40:22.440 --> 00:40:24.420 we have across the ocean are always from aircraft, 00:40:26.580 --> 00:40:30.540 and this is often why, you  know, you are 16, 18 Z-ron  00:40:30.540 --> 00:40:34.260 of the models is not as  skillful as your zero and 12, 00:40:34.260 --> 00:40:37.080 and actually the 0 is a little  more skillful than the 12 00:40:37.080 --> 00:40:41.280 because you are assimilating more of the trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific flights that 00:40:41.280 --> 00:40:45.180 occur throughout the course of the evening and overnight hours. 00:40:50.520 --> 00:40:51.240 Very cool.