The Water Vapor Channel
What alien planet's bizarre landscape
lurks below these fiery-looking clouds?
It's only Planet Earth,
of course ... as seen on the Water Vapor Channel.
Hourly, images like this one (an infrared image shown in false color)
are brought to you by the orbiting
Geostationary Operational
Environmental Satellites' (GOES)
multi-channel imagers.
These instruments can produce images at the
infrared wavelength of 6.7 microns or about 10 times the
wavelength of visible light, recording radiation emitted by water vapor in
the upper troposphere.
Bright regions correspond to high concentrations
of water vapor while dark spots are relatively dry areas.
Atmospheric water vapor is invisible to the eye
and produced by evaporation from the oceans.
Convected upward in the tropical zones it
affects the climate by contributing
substantially to the greenhouse effect.