Tuesday, June 09, 2015

Satellite View of India's Heat Wave

The recent heat wave in India saw more than 2,500 deaths, the fifth-deadliest heat wave on record. Here's the outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) measured over Asia during that time (May 15-27), measured by CERES. (Note: lighter regions are hotter.)

India Faces Deadly Heat Wave
Color bar for India Faces Deadly Heat Wave

OLR depends on more than just the temperature of the surface -- like humidity and cloud cover -- so you can't just convert the OLRs to temperatures via the Stefan-Boltzmann law. But these differences are much bigger than I would have expected.

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