• Facebook
  • Twitter
x

RealTime Images

  • Portfolio
  • About
  • Contact
  • Video
  • Blog
  • Archive
Show Navigation
InternationalArchive
Cart Lightbox Client Area
Download
twitterlinkedinfacebook

Polar Vortex - 31 Jan 2019

13 images Created 31 Jan 2019

View: 100 | All

Loading ()...

  • As temperatures dipped into the minus 20 degree range with a -42 windchill, the running paths around Lake Bde Maka Ska were drifting over with dangerous winds off the lake on January 29, 2019 in Minneapolis, Minn. Photo by Brian Peterson/Minneapolis Star Tribune/TNS/ABACAPRESS.COM
    668407_001.jpg
  • With temperatures dipping into the upper 20's below zero with a -50 wind chill, St. Paul's West 7th neighborhood was steaming Wednesday morning as furnaces tried to keep up with the record breaking cold on January 30, 2019. Photo by Brian Peterson/Minneapolis Star Tribune/TNS/ABACAPRESS.COM
    668407_002.jpg
  • St. Paul firefighters at the scene of a house fire at Hatch Ave. and Park St. Wednesday, January 30, 2019, In St. Paul, Minn. Photo by David Joles/Minneapolis Star Tribune/TNS/ABACAPRESS.COM
    668407_003.jpg
  • St. Paul firefighters at the scene of a house fire at Hatch Ave. and Park St. Wednesday, January 30, 2019, In St. Paul, Minn. Photo by David Joles/Minneapolis Star Tribune/TNS/ABACAPRESS.COM
    668407_004.jpg
  • St. Paul firefighters at the scene of a house fire at Hatch Ave. and Park St. Wednesday, January 30, 2019, In St. Paul, Minn. Photo by David Joles/Minneapolis Star Tribune/TNS/ABACAPRESS.COM
    668407_005.jpg
  • With wind chills below minus 50 degrees the Minneapolis skyline is visible Wednesday, January 30, 2019, in Minneapolis, Minn. Photo by David Joles/Minneapolis Star Tribune/TNS/ABACAPRESS.COM
    668407_006.jpg
  • A cyclist decked out in cold weather gear rides past the city skyline and a frozen Bde Maka Ska on Jan. 30, 2019 in Minneapolis MN, USA. Photo by Anthony Souffle/Minneapolis Star Tribune/TNS/ABACAPRESS.COM
    668427_001.jpg
  • February 14, 2016 - Earth Atmosphere - Astronaut Scott Kelly posted this photo of the polar vortex taken from the International Space Station to Twitter on February 14, 2016 with the caption, That polarvortex even looks cold from here! Burr! YearInSpace. (Credit Image: ? Scott Kelly/NASA via ZUMA Wire/ZUMAPRESS.com)
    20160214_sha_z03_290.jpg
  • On a clear day, Heard Island stands as a small drumstick-shaped patch of rock and snow amidst a vast expanse of blue. Located in the southwestern Indian Ocean and only accessible by boat, the small volcanic island is situated 4,000 kilometers southwest of Western Australia, 4,700 kilometers southeast of Africa, and 1,000 kilometers north of Antarctica.<br />
When the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured this image of Heard Island, just the tip of Mawson Peak - the highest point on the island - was visible through the sheet of marine stratocumulus clouds swirling over this part of the Furious Fifties. Though just 2,745 meters (9,006 feet), the mountain was tall enough to stir up several cloud vortices that swirled downwind like eddies in a fast-moving river.<br />
Theodore von Kármán, a Hungarian-American physicist, was the first to describe the physical processes that create long chains of spiral eddies like the ones shown above. Known as von Kármán vortices, the patterns can form nearly anywhere that fluid flow is disturbed by an object. In this case, the unique flow occurs as winds streamed around Mawson Peak. As winds were diverted around the mountain, the disturbance in the flow propagated downstream in the form of vortices that alternate their direction of rotation.<br />
Often, von Kármán vortices form relatively straight lines of eddies; in this case, powerful southerly winds appear to be pushing the vortices northward. You can view the scene on the Worldview browser to get a broader view of the vortices trailing north.<br />
References<br />
Department of the Environment Heard Island. Accessed May 6, 2016.<br />
NASA GES DISC Science Focus: Von Kármán Vortices. Accessed May 6, 2016.<br />
NASA Earth Observatory (2002, March 14) A Vortex Street in the Arctic. Accessed May 6, 2016..<br />
JPL History<br />
Theodore von Kármán. Accessed May 6, 2016..<br />
Slate (2013, April 12) The Streets Are Paved with…Vortices. Accessed May 6, 2016.<br />
NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response.
    rtisipausa_17601804.jpg
  • The ocean has storms and weather that rival the size and scale of tropical cyclones. But rather than destruction, these storms - better known as eddies - are more likely to bring life to the sea...and often in places that are otherwise barren.<br />
The<br />
Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite captured these natural-color images of a deep-ocean eddy on December 26, 2011. The top close-up shows the vortex structure of the eddy, traced in light blue by plankton blooming in the 150-kilometer wide swirl. The lower, wider view shows the bloom and eddy in context, about 800 kilometers south of South Africa.<br />
"Eddies are the internal weather of the sea," says Dennis McGillicuddy, an oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. They are huge masses of water spinning in a whirlpool pattern - either clockwise or counterclockwise - and they can stretch for hundreds of kilometers. Eddies often spin off from major ocean current systems and can last for months.<br />
In the image above, the anti-cyclonic (counter-clockwise) eddy likely peeled off from the Agulhas Current, which flows along the southeastern coast of Africa and around the tip of South Africa. Agulhas eddies, or "current rings," tend to be among the largest in the world, transporting warm, salty water from the Indian Ocean to the South Atlantic.<br />
Certain types of eddies can promote blooms of phytoplankton. As these water masses stir the ocean, they draw nutrients up from the deep, fertilizing the surface waters to create blooms of microscopic, plant-like organisms in the open ocean, which is relatively barren compared to coastal waters.<br />
In satellite observations of sea surface height and in computer models, eddies appear as bumps or depressions in the ocean, indicating the upwelling or downwelling of water. They also can be distinguished by higher or lower surface temperatures. However, such observations were not available for the eddy depicted above.<br />
References<br />
Carlowicz, M. (
    rtisipausa_17601897.jpg
  • March 27, 2017 - Space - From high above Saturn's northern hemisphere, NASA's Cassini spacecraft gazes over the planet's north pole, with its intriguing hexagon and bullseye-like central vortex. Saturn's moon Mimas is visible as a mere speck near upper right. At 246 miles (396 kilometers across) across, Mimas is considered a medium-sized moon. It is large enough for its own gravity to have made it round, but isn't one of the really large moons in our solar system, like Titan. Even enormous Titan is tiny beside the mighty gas giant Saturn. This view looks toward Saturn from the sunlit side of the rings, from about 27 degrees above the ring plane. The image was taken in green light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera. (Credit Image: ? JPL-Caltech/NASA via ZUMA Wire/ZUMAPRESS.com)
    20170605_sha_z03_176.jpg
  • The Chicago skyline seen from North Avenue beach as the sunrises on a cold and chilly Wednesday morning, January 30, 2019. Photo by Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune/TNS/ABACAPRESS.COM
    668534_001.jpg
  • Metra trains go in and out of the Western Avenue Station in subzero temperatures on Tuesday, January 29, 2019 in Chicago. The tracks are heated with gas-fired switch heaters that help prevent switching problems in extreme weather. Metra spokesperson Meg Reile said, "They are like giant gas grills." Photo by Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune/TNS/ABACAPRESS.COM
    668534_002.jpg