1. Global Winds Michael J. Garay
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, California, USA

2. http://geography. sierra. cc. ca

3. How to teach this?

4. National Science Education Standards
Earth Science
Energy in the Earth system
Heating of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere by the sun drives convection within the atmosphere and ocean, producing winds and ocean currents (9-12)
Global winds are part of a pattern of air circulation across the Earth and include the trade winds, westerlies and the polar easterlies

5. The “Scientific Method”

6. Three Approaches Factual Historical Synthesis
These are “facts” that students should know
Historical
Science (i.e., learning about the world) is done by people (and not always “scientists”)
Synthesis
Science provides a unifying idea (theory) that explains many different things

7. Global Wind Systems

8. Historical Aristotle George Hadley Christopher Columbus Edmond Halley
William Ferrel
Isaac Newton

9. World Map Showing the “Four Winds”

10. “T-O” Map Showing the “Eight Winds”

11. World Map Showing the “Twelve Winds” of Aristotle

13. Edmond Halley’s Map of the Major Global Wind Systems (1686)

14. The “Scientific Method”

15. George Hadley

16. The Ferrel Cell

17. The Ferrel Cell

18. http://geography. sierra. cc. ca

19. Synthesis

20. The “Scientific Method”

21. Thinking Like a
Scientist

22. “Earthrise” from Apollo 8
December 24, 1968

23. Apollo 17 View of the Earth
“Blue Marble”
December 7, 1972

24. “Blue Marble” from MODIS (Available as an iPhone background)

25. MODIS Land, Ocean, Ice, Cloud

26. MODIS Land Only

27. The Hadley Circulation

28. MISR Directional Hemispheric Reflectance (DHR)

30. One Month of Precipitation from the
Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM)

31. MODIS Land, Ocean, Ice, Cloud

32. MODIS Cloud Only

33. http://geography. sierra. cc. ca

34. Jupiter Composite from the Cassini Spacecraft

35. Seeing the Wind

36. Ocean Surface Winds from the QuikSCAT Instrument on the SeaWinds Satellite

38. QuikSCAT Mean Ocean Winds Annual Climatology

39. NCEP Reanalysis Mean Ocean Surface Winds Annual Climatology

40. NCEP Reanalysis Mean Winds Annual 0 - 1 km Climatology

41. NCEP Reanalysis Mean Winds Annual 1 - 2 km Climatology

42. NCEP Reanalysis Mean Winds Annual 2 - 3.5 km Climatology

43. NCEP Reanalysis Mean Winds Annual 3.5 - 5 km Climatology

44. NCEP Reanalysis Mean Winds Annual 5 - 7 km Climatology

45. NCEP Reanalysis Mean Winds Annual 7 - 10 km Climatology

46. NCEP-2/MISR Zonal Mean Wind Plots
December 2001 – August 2007

47. Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR)
Nine view angles at Earth surface:
70.5º forward to 70.5º backward
Nine 14-bit pushbroom cameras
275 m km sampling
Four spectral bands at each angle:
446, 558, 672, 866 nm
400-km swath: 9-day coverage
at equator, 2-day at poles
7 minutes to observe each scene
at all nine angles 47

48. 48

49. MISR Low Cloud Wind Vectors for January 2011

50. MISR Low Cloud Wind Vectors for July 2011

51. Where Does the Wind Blow?

52. Frequency of Wind Speeds Greater than 20 m/s (45 mph)
Height ≤ 1 km AGL
Low
High

53. Frequency of Wind Speeds Greater than 20 m/s (45 mph)
Height ≤ 2 km AGL
Low
High

54. Frequency of Wind Speeds Greater than 20 m/s (45 mph)
Height ≤ 3 km AGL
Low
High

55. Frequency of Wind Speeds Greater than 20 m/s (45 mph)
Height ≤ 4 km AGL
Low
High

56. Frequency of Wind Speeds Greater than 20 m/s (45 mph)
Height ≤ 5 km AGL
Low
High

57. Frequency of Wind Speeds Greater than 20 m/s (45 mph) over Africa (DJF)
Mediterranean Sea
35°N
30°N
Qattara Depression
Algeria 2 2
Egypt
Libya
25°N
Sahara Desert
Selima Sand Sheet
Mauritania
Niger
Chad
20°N 2
Mali
Ténéré Desert 3 2 3 2
Western Sahara Desert 2 4 2 5 13 9 3 5 19 8 15 8
Figure 1. 2 2 2 5 4 15 4 7 6
15°N
Sudan 2 8 2 3
Bodélé Depression
10°N
Nigeria
10°W
5°W
0°E
5°E
10°E
15°E
20°E
25°E
30°E
35°E

58. Figure 1. MODIS-Terra true color image from 20 February 2008 around 0930 UT over the Bodélé region in Chad from Google Earth™. Superimposed on the image are representative MISR image blocks in magenta and the CALIPSO lidar ground track in green. Note that the time difference between the Terra satellite (MISR) overpass and the A-Train (CALIPSO) overpass is approximately 3 hours. The primary dust generating region of the Bodélé is in the center of the image, with a smaller dust source to the southeast. Lake Chad is in the lower left of the image and the Tibesti Mountains are the dark region in the top center of the image.

59. The Bodélé Depression
Credit: Giles (2005), Nature, “The Dustiest Place on Earth”

60. Credits: Giles (2005), Nature, [Lower left, upper right]
Bristow et al. (2009), Geomorphology [Upper left, lower right]

61. Dust from the Sahara Desert Reaches Houston, Texas
United States
Aug 29
Aug 26
Aug 25
Aug 24
Aug 23
Aug 22
Aug 21
Aug 20
Aug 19
Africa
South America
Observations from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR)
Instrument on NASA’s Terra Satellite

64. Current MISR Wind Product
Some Resources
MISR
misr.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/worldmap.html
JPL (Solar System)
photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/Help/ImageGallery.html
NASA (Animations)
svs.gsfc.nasa.gov
Google Image Search
New and Improved!
Current MISR Wind Product
New MISR Wind Product