Trailspotter
Senior Member.
While browsing recent Earth images on NASA EOSDIS Worldview, I spotted a blue spiral in the Gulf of Oman.
The image above was taken by the Terra satellite on May 4, 2015, but the spiral can be seen on the images taken by both Terra and Aqua satellites between April 23 and May 8. Here is an animation made from the daily images from April 29 to May 4:
It is not a new phenomenon, similar blue spirals have been captured previously by the MODIS satellites and described in Earth Observatory blogs. One of these was spotted south of Africa on December 26, 2011:
The Eddy and the Plankton (February 11, 2012)
Spiral of Plankton (January 9, 2014)
The image above was taken by the Terra satellite on May 4, 2015, but the spiral can be seen on the images taken by both Terra and Aqua satellites between April 23 and May 8. Here is an animation made from the daily images from April 29 to May 4:
It is not a new phenomenon, similar blue spirals have been captured previously by the MODIS satellites and described in Earth Observatory blogs. One of these was spotted south of Africa on December 26, 2011:
The Eddy and the Plankton (February 11, 2012)
The other was spotted south of Australia on December 30, 2013: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.
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.
Spiral of Plankton (January 9, 2014)
As the close-up image shows, an eddy is outlined by a milky green phytoplankton bloom. Eddies are masses of water that typically spin off of larger currents and rotate in whirlpool-like fashion. They can stretch for hundreds of kilometers and last for months. As these water masses stir the ocean, they can draw nutrients up from the deep, fertilizing the surface waters to create blooms in the open ocean. Other times, they carry in nutrients spun off of other currents.
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