Short: Spectacular Satellite Anim of weather. Author: rch@blarg.net (Bob Harrington) Uploader: rch blarg net (Bob Harrington) Type: pix/anim Architecture: generic 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 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...)