Pacific Ocean Time Lapse

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Clouds swirl across the Pacific Ocean in this time lapse. The data is from Himawari-8, a Japanese weather satellite in geostationary orbit over New Guinea. Every 10 minutes, it photographs the hemisphere below it. This animation is a loop of yesterday’s images. Strong winds head from East Asia, in the upper left, toward Alaska, hidden by clouds in the upper right. Australia is in the bottom center, with the edge of the Antarctic ice sheet below it and tropic storm Ula to its right. The reflection of the sun on smooth water, called sunglint, moves east to west across the Pacific just south of the Equator. At this time of year – the Southern Hemisphere’s summer – the North Pole is never sunlit, but the South Pole always is.

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