Going Further
Variations
Animate a different time interval of images from NEO AOT which has daily and 8-day average data also. This might work well to look at phenomena like a volcanic eruption whose plume is less visible in the monthly average.
Other Datasets
Some additional combinations of NEO datasets to explore include the following:
- Net Radiation, Snow Cover and Solar Insolation
- Sea Surface Temperature and Net Primary Productivity
- Sea surface temperature and water vapor
- Sea Surface Temperature and Chlorophyll Concentration
- Reflected Short Wave Radiation and Cloud Cover (cirrus or total)
- Sea Ice and Snow Cover over the course of a season
- Solar Insolation (incoming radiation) and Reflected Short Wave Radiation
- Sea Surface Temperature, Water Vapor, Outgoing Long Wave Radiation, and leaf cover for summer versus winter in the Northern Hemisphere
Other Techniques
Visually compare two variables on this website:https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/global-maps
Rainforests at a Crossroads NEO exercise #3—Limits to Plant Growth—explores the relationship between Solar Insolation, Land Surface Temperature and Rainfall.
Additional supporting Data
Use fire maps, areas with known fires, to further test your "set of rules" for CO and particulates under different circumstances.
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/firemaps/?2005241-2005250
Other Tools
Import and overlay some of the NEO datasets into Google Earth.
Related Case Studies
Other EET chapters that utilize NASA NEO and / or ImageJ as a tool and satellite imagery as a data source include the following:
- Using NASA NEO and ImageJ to Explore the Role of Snow Cover in Shaping Climate—Investigate satellite images displaying land surface temperature, snow cover, and reflected short wave radiation data from the NASA Earth Observation (NEO) website. Animate the images and compare them with the NEO ICE tool.
- Annotating Change in Satellite Images—Use time-series images to produce a map documenting land-use changes in China.
- Analyzing the Antarctic Ozone Hole—Measure and graph the area of depleted ozone from Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) images.
- Measuring Distance and Area in Satellite Images—Use ImageJ to quantify change over time in satellite images.
- Shrinking Forest - Growing Problem—Use time-series Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images to create a color composite image showing the oldest to most recently deforested areas in the Amazon rainforest.
- Whither Arctic Sea Ice?—Animate thirty years of sea ice images, measure the ice extent each year, and then graph and analyze the results.
