NASA images

I was having a look at the NASA website today and came across a few interesting images.

The first one shows the unusually warm temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere this winter. It shows the December 2006 land surface temperature compared to the average December temperatures from 2000-2005. (Land surface temperatures are how hot or cool the land surface would feel to the touch. It is different from the air temperature, which is what weather stations usually measure.)

Where daytime land surface temperatures are above the five-year average the area is coloured red, places where it is below the average in blue, and places near the average are white. Dramatic swaths of red paint most of the Northern Hemisphere.

This second image shows rivers of smoke from Victorian bush fires from January 11, 2007. These fires are burning from areas in Victoria’s Great Dividing Range Mountains. Places where the satellite detected actively burning fires are outlined in red. Many fires were burning dangerously close to Lake Thomson, the principal source of water for Melbourne (beyond the western edge of the image).

More recently (16 January) the major interconnector between New South Wales and Victoria went down because of bush fires and left many in Melbourne without electricity.