The spill has happened from the white round containers grouped on the bottom of this large zoom of the river Ambarnaya flowing from the bottom left corner towards the lake on the top.
The precise diesel images are already nicely captured by ESA:
But here are images grabbed from CreoDias. First the still clean green tinted stretch close to the Pyasino lake outflow to the top of the image of this small river that opens up to two paths in this image from the 23rd May. There is still some lake ice on the small ponds around the river.
Clean Ambarnaya river
Next the stretch is visible on 31st May with diesel visible.
diesel on river Ambarnaya
And finally the diesel has progressed further towards the lake on 1st June. The image is just from the border of the satellite swath.
Let’s hope the diesel can be stopped before entering the lake! If you want to investigate yourself, try this link to CreoDias browser. You can play around with different channels and make their weight change in the script.
UPDATE: Planet released a very clear looking image of the extent of the oil spilled. Many small water ponds south-east of the river that flows from the collapsed tank have red content clearly visible.
Image was originally posted in this post: https://www.planet.com/pulse/clashing-eastern-superpowers-explosions-in-the-middle-east-dark-fishing-fleets-and-more/
Blog / Candice Pedersen & Sarah Rosengard / November 28, 2019
This
fall has been a busy time for everyone in the Arctic Eider Society, as
we have been preparing for the highly anticipated, official launch of
the Indigenous Knowledge Social Network, SIKU.org, this December.
This platform started as a prototype back in 2015 as a joint
initiative by community members of Sanikiluaq, Inukjuak, Umiujaq,
Kuujjaraapik and Chisasibi. Today, it exists as a website and app for all Inuit communities
to access cutting-edge weather, ice and ocean maps, and a safe space
for sharing Inuit knowledge about ice, wildlife, travel safety and
hunting. Any user can obtain weather forecasts and satellite imagery of
ice conditions without having to find the individual web sources
separately.
While people were already using Facebook to share hunting stories,
these collaborators envisioned a social media platform that archived
indigenous knowledge, but unlike a Facebook page, allowed all users to
retain the rights to their knowledge. Since then, SIKU has grown into
that very platform.
In particular, SIKU brings in Sentinel 1 Radar imagery, critical to
assessing ice conditions during the dark winter months or through
clouds, Sentinel 2 visual imagery, MODIS, and other imagery as well as
derived products that dynamically process Sentinel 1 to assess ice
roughness. Most importantly, reports about dangerous ice conditions by
local hunters can be made with the app putting Inuit knowledge and
observations front and center with weather and remote sensing products.
Created by Inuit for Inuit, SIKU.org
continuously evolves as more communities adapt it for their own
challenges, interests and priorities. As more people use the platform,
it has become a great example of how Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, science
research, and technology can coalesce in one place to benefit
communities through sharing of ice dangers and wildlife knowledge to
younger generations.
The past three weeks, late October to mid-November, were an
especially exciting time span for SIKU.org, as members of Arctic Eider
Society traveled to eight communities from the Kitikmeot to Kivalliq
regions of Nunavut to demonstrate the platform’s latest features to new
users: from hunters to teachers, youth to elders, and college students
to wildlife officers.
We are deeply thankful for the insights of each community member that
joined us, and for their time spent sharing ways to make SIKU.org
better for where they live. The lessons learned these past three weeks
reflect the value of implementing SIKU.org in as many different places
and seasons as possible. We are excited to turn everyone’s input from
this fall into reality by incorporating ice conditions and wildlife
names in all the different Inuktut dialects, and fine-tuning the app to
better communicate travel dangers during seasons when ice conditions are
most unstable.
Gjoa Haven workshop attendees after helping us lead a public community meeting about the app to their community
After
SIKU.org launches, we hope to continue growing our partnerships across
the Inuit Nunangat, so that all communities may participate in
SIKU.org’s ever-evolving development as a platform for
self-determination and climate change resilience.
About the authors
Candice Pedersen is a young Inuk who grew up in
Iqaluit, Nunavut. A graduate of the Environmental Technology Program,
Candice has been working in the enforcement field for the Government of
Nunavut and most recently the Federal Government of Canada. Candice is
the regional Kitikmeot coordinator for the Ikaarvik Program, which
focuses on Inuit Qauyimayatuqangit (IQ) and the relationship between
Inuit and researchers, and the Arctic Eider Society (AES), which runs
the SIKU.org project. Candice first joined the SIKU.org development team
after participating in a training workshop in March 2019, and
represented AES at the United Nations Forum Convention on Climate Change
in June. In her personal time, Candice is an avid outdoors person,
enjoying hunting, camping, sewing garments for hunting and fashion
alike, as well as protecting the environment. She has also been taught
the traditional art of tattooing Inuit women and has been working to
bring back these practices to the culture to empower aboriginal women in
a rapidly changing modern world.
Sarah Rosengard grew up in Queens, New York. She is a
SIKU coordinator for the Arctic Eider Society (AES) and a postdoctoral
fellow in oceanography at the University of British Columbia (UBC).
While completing a PhD in marine (and river) chemistry at MIT/Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution, she grew passionate about communicating
science to stakeholders, using art to advance ocean science literacy,
and helping communities drive the research process. Following these
interests, she accepted a postdoctoral fellowship from the Ocean Leaders
program at UBC to explore applications of ocean optics to marine
resource management and STEAM education. Through this work, she
connected with the AES and various partners in Nunavut to codevelop
SIKU.org’s use across northern communities in close partnership with
Candice.
Every 6 months a new forecast and the verification of the past season will be analyzed.
In short: It seems that an even warmer Arctic winter is ahead of us.
The Arctic Regional Climate Forum (Arc-RCC) is made out of three centers: North America (USA, Canada), Eurasia (Russia) and the Nordic countries (Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland).
Helsinki hosted a wonderful Polar Data Forum. It was the third time ever and it had a new record audience at 150 participants in Forum sessions and over 30 extras in a closely related side-event. The first two days were packed with the conference having 36 presentations and 17 lightning talks. A great breadth of actions across the globe on three poles, technical for the most, but some even touching social matters. In conclusion we might say that in matters of data management remote areas of this world pay a lot of attention.
The next days two days 9 partly parallel sessions drilled practically into broad policy, detailed semantics and federated search topics. Sessions dedicated to data interoperability, Marine data, NASA Icesat2 mission and EU Polar data policy fleshed out progress and knowledge transfer in many directions. Attendance was in total about half of that of the conference, but most praise I heard afterwards came from this part.
Friday was then dedicated to business meetings of the Arctic Data Committee and the Standing Committee of Antarctic Data Management. They mixed at times to have actions well linked up. The ADC meeting sparked off a new direction for a potential new working group (currently Federated Search and Semantics): One for Analysis Ready Data from Earth Observation (=satellite data). Anyone is welcome to join, we especially hope anyone that is hosting Arctic EO data would join this group.
Thanks a bunch for everybody at Helsinki last week!
SAON developed a framework for assessing arctic observing networks in 2017 and FMI lead a project to use this framework in a value tree for meteorological and oceanographic networks as one of the last efforts in the Finnish chairmanship of the Arctic Council. The results can be viewed on the http://arctic-obs.fmi.fi/ site.
It is good to recognize that efforts in these disciplines for networks between 30°N and 60°N are five times greater than for networks north of 60°N – it’s 810 m€ compared to 178 m€ per year. The table below describes the amount of stations in 30° latitude slices of our Earth according to the WMO Oscar database and related to area of Earth.
Latitude slice
total
WIGOS
co-sponsored
non-affiliated
area %
land %
60°N-90°N
2 218
1 352
853
13
6,53
3,04
30°N-60°N
13 070
7 436
5 472
162
18,37
8,79
0°N-30°N
8 062
2 820
5 222
20
25,1
6,81
0°S-30°S
5 805
2 300
3 432
73
25,1
5,66
30°S-60°N
4 120
917
3 199
4
18,37
0,91
60°S-90°S
712
165
547
0
6,53
2,53
Comparing network densities between the most developed world in 30°N-60°N and the Arctic (>60°N), Arctic observing networks would need to be roughly doubled for the same level of information. Land-based networks a little less than monitoring over sea areas. The WMO global observing system WIGOS is largely land-based, while co-sponsored networks are mainly observing systems on the sea co-organized by WMO and IOC. Non-affiliated networks are stations from research organizations/universities.
Doubling the efforts for Arctic Observing networks seems pertinent for meteorology and oceanography. Other observing systems for biodiversity or pollution have not been analyzed, so also the expansion of the value tree exercise is necessary for a holistic view on Arctic Observing needs.
WMO OSCAR all stations plot with 30° latitude slice borders at 60°N, 30°N, 0°, 30°S, 60°S.
The stories will come from pilot services developed in the E-Shape project that showcases EuroGEOSS, the new regional initiative of GEO for Europe. However this site is looking for anyone to offer their stories of environmental monitoring of our dear planet helping to solve real life challenges to people and nature in the Arctic.
If you want to contribute, tell us at root@arcticgeoss.org and we will add your story to this blog. We are looking for stories with rich information services using a wealth of monitoring information, but the main beef is the concrete benefit of this information.
