The Advertiser (Adelaide/Australia)
HOTLINK SURF SITE
by Samela Harris

JUNE 2001 (Week 1)

Those satellites we sometimes can spy moving across the night sky are not just adding to the cacophonous clutter of world communications - some of them are monitoring the state of the world. The Terra satellite, launched on December 1999, is an environmental observer keeping track of atmospheric pollution and it is hoped that its findings will play a vital role in the evolution of international environmental policy. Among the instruments taking data from Terra is the Canadian MOPITT (Measurements Of Pollution In The Troposphere). This tracks carbon monoxide and methane in the atmosphere - and the first images derived from its data have just been revealed to the world. One shows a cloud of carbon monoxide blooming out of South East Asia and wafting across the Pacific and another shows great spouts from the massive forests burns of South America. Many of these images are to be found on NASA'a Visible Earth website which displays fascinating and often alarming data from Terra and other satellites such as TOMS and the LandSats:
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/

Being connectively global requires some awareness of world times - which is why so many world clocks have sprung up on the Internet. As a simple soul, I prefer those which show me very simply where it is day and night. This is an absolute favorite clock. Not only the sunclock, but daylight saving times as well as time times...
http://www.worldtimezone.com/