I discovered the European Space Agency‘s satellite pictures today, and I’m mesmerized. Search by region, type of satellite, or atmospheric occurrence, and beautiful images will appear before you.

I like images with smoke, so I looked for fires and sandstorms. Weird to imagine there’s suffering going on beneath those pluming wisps of beige and white. Each one is a narrative unto itself. ESA provides a blurb about the day each image was taken. They also provide high-res files, if you still need free art for your walls.

Here are nine I like.

July 1, 2008, Persian Gulf

Envisat captures sand and dust blowing northeast from the ArabianPeninsula across the Persian Gulf toward Iran (visible at image top).

Some of the world’s largest sandy desert areas, including theRub’ al Khali and An-Nafud, are located in the Arabian Peninsula.Sand and dust storms are usually the result of atmosphericconvection currents, which form when warm, lighter air rises and cold,heavier air sinks.

Dust storms in northeastern Iraq, the Persian Gulf and the southernArabian Peninsula are more frequent in summer because a strongnorthwesterly wind, called the shamal, blows over the floodplain ofIraq’s Tigris and Euphrates Rivers for up to three months, transportingthe sand and dust.

April 17, 2006, Beijing, China

The worst sandstorm in five years swept through Beijing, China,overnight, covering the city in some 300 000 tons of sand andyellow dust. Envisat captured the sand whipping over the capitol.

Every year from March to the end of May, dust blowing off theMongolian desert plain descends upon northern China, but the problemhas worsened in recent years as north-western parts of the country turninto desert.

In 2004, The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said thedust storm problem is plaguing Northeast Asia nearly five times asoften as it did in the 1950s and is worsening with growingdesertification. To combat the spread of its desert areas, Beijing hasbeen making efforts to plant trees and vegetation.

August 8, 2004, Egypt and Sudan

This image shows southern Egypt and northern Sudan.

The land of Nubia is a desert divided by the river Nile. A largeportion of the northern part of ancient Nubia currently is found underthe reservoir formed behind Egypt’s High Dam at Aswan.

Along the south west coasts (lower left), the image shows the Babel Mandeb strait, between the Arabian Peninsula and Africa, connectingthe Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. The east coast portion of the imagecovers the Yemen and Saudi Arabia states. A sandstorm is visible alongthe west coast (center image).

September 14, 2008, Iraq

A sandstorm sweeps across central Iraq in this Envisat image.

Dust storms, or sandstorms, are usually the result of a large massof cold air moving swiftly across dry ground covered with loose sandand silt.

October 27, 2006 Southern California

This Envisat image captures the fire insouthern California that claimed the lives of five firefighters andforced hundreds of people to evacuate their homes.

The blaze, called ‘Esperanza’, burned some 163 square kilometres about 144 kilometreseast of the city of Los Angeles before firefighters contained it.

August 9, 2006, Spain and Portugal

This Envisat image captured some of the fires raging across north-western Spain and Portugal.

The fires in Spain hadmainly occurred in the port city of Vigo and the medieval city ofSantiago de Compostela in the region of Galicia, charring more than 10000 hectares of forest. As of Thursday 10 August, more than 100 fireswere reported raging in the area.

Galicia experiences forest fires every year and has one of the mostefficient systems to combat forest fires in Spain. That year’s spate offires, however, was described by officials as ‘unprecedented,’according to the local media.

December 12, 2005, London

London is completely blanketed by the black plumeof smoke from Europe’s worst peacetime fire in this Envisat image,taken within five hours of the blaze beginning.

This image was acquired at 10:45 GMT on Sunday morning by theMedium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS), one of ten instrumentsaboard Envisat, Europe’s largest satellite for environmentalmonitoring. This Full Resolution mode image has a spatial resolution of300 metres, and shows the cloud spread across a span of around 140 km.

The pall of smoke comes from a fire at Buncefield oil depot on theoutskirts of Hemel Hempstead. Buncefield is the fifth largest fuelstorage depot in the UK, distributing millions of tonnes of petrol andother oil products per year, including aviation fuel to nearby Lutonand Heathrow Airports.

June 19, 2004, Indonesia

ESA’s micro-satellite Proba observes the active Bromo volcano, a popular tourist attraction of East Java in Indonesia.
 
Indonesia is located within the Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’ volcano beltand has more than a hundred active volcanoes within its territory. Witharound 200 million inhabitants, Java is the most populated island inIndonesia and also the world. The island was formed by ancient volcanicactivity.

Bromo is one of Java’s most active volcanoes, located on top of the16-kilometre-wide Tenegger Caldera in East Java, with a summitelevation of 2329 metres. The Caldera is part of Bromo Tengger SemeruNational Park, situated about 112 km southeast of the East Java capitalof Surabaya.

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