Jay, I'm not so sure Skyder, in it's detail, has been done before. What George has done is crowd-source the times and locations of the occurrences of persistent contrails. Yes, it is not exhaustive and all inclusive, and you can't tell where they are not occurring.
The
Map page gives data like this:
Oct 21 2013 12:10 PM-GLEN MILLS-PA
Oct 21 2013 11:42 AM-CUSHING-Oklahoma
Oct 21 2013 11:28 AM-ANDERSON-IN
Oct 21 2013 11:18 AM-DAYTON-OH
So you have a time and a location; effectively an "address".
With a bit of programming you can isolate and re-express the address, pass it to a Google Map web service and get the latitude and longitude.
Take "Oct 21 2013 12:10 PM-GLEN MILLS-PA" for example...
The date part can be converted to a standard date format such as "12:10p.m. 21 Oct 2013" - use this to sync with other data.
The address can be rewritten "GLEN MILLS,PA,USA" and passed to the Google web service...
http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=GLEN MILLS,PA,USA&sensor=false
You get some stuff back, and the important bit is this:
Code:
"formatted_address" : "Glen Mills, PA 19342, USA",
"geometry" : {
"location" : {
"lat" : 39.9192772,
"lng" : -75.4915896
},
A latitude and longitude in decimal format! Thank you Google!
Now you can plot the location of the photographed persistent contrail on a map with a satellite image, say Water Vapor, or some other meteorological data.
Of course, not all photos are of persistent contrails; some are of ephemeral contrails (
George himself "submitted" one of these), some are of other
suspicious cloud forms (AC or CC undulatus), and I have seen a selfie by some guy in France. (Outside the US, there is no address information on the "submissions" in the map list.)
Unfortunately, while the map page allows you to click on an item in the list and see a marker on the map with a thumbnail of the photo, you cannot click through to a larger version of it. I suspect that was the original plan. I much bring this to the attention of the web team there.
Anyway, you can see the potential of this growing resource:
- Mash it up with weather data
- Verify or debunk that the government shutdown resulted in a reduced "chemtrail operation"
- Verify that some location did or didn't have persistent contrails during some period
- Where are the "activists" most active or most concentrated?
- Where are the "activist" growth areas?
George now has an email address collection campaign to increase the size of the crowd collecting the data. In a recent
email update, (I hope that link works for everyone)
This great work George! I, for one, can't thank you enough.
