Thread: For you that could not come to the #COP25Madrid #COP25Chile Night time images for CO2 Monitoring, biodiversity and light pollution control 👇 
First, I'm Alejandro Sánchez de Miguel Researcher of the @UniofExeterNews, honorific member of the @unicomplutense and member of the board of directors of the @IDADarkSky. I'm leader of @cities4tnight suported by @Ibercivis, @FECYT_Ciencia and @SavestarsCo. Advisor of @iaa_csic
@UniofExeterNews @unicomplutense @IDADarkSky @cities4tnight @Ibercivis @FECYT_Ciencia @SavestarsCo @iaa_csic We are at the #COP25Madrid because the CO" emissions are growing without control.
Even if we know the sectors where this CO2 is produced, we would like to map these emissions to confront their producers with them.
But the CO2 is invisible, so is very difficult to make a map like that. We need to use proxies.
But we can use the light detected on the night time images to trace these emissions. It is not perfect, but they are very useful.
Nearly everybody knows this image. It is the @NASA Black Marble. And is used everywhere as an example of the impact of the humans on the Earth.
One of the reasons why it is used so much is because it is a good indicator of population. Here you can see the population distribution of the US population. Here the source of these images:
Here the night lights. Similar, no?
But big CO2 emitters emit also much more light than the population tipicaly.
So, if we compensate by the population, we see how the fracking extractions of North Dakota and Texas clearly stand out.
This night times images are been used in many articles. For example agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.100… Where they use these images to estimate the CO2 emitted by fossil fuels in 2010.
These are very useful because we know very well the population of the US but not of other countries like India or Bangladesh.
And what we can see from the space at night?
We can see cars, boats, factories, mines, ornamental lights, dams, oil extraction and fires, and of course, street lights.
Here there are planes crossing the Atlantic. Source: eogdata.mines.edu/trip_the_light…
Boat traffic in the Mediterranean.
More boats and illegal fishing in south-west Asia.
Cars in highways. and sky glow (source paper on revision).
But also we can see here the centre of Madrid, with the Puerta del Sol on the left and Gran Via, where we can see hotels with a lot of lights, so maybe not been very energy efficient.
This is the Iberian peninsula at night.
If we check the brightest spots, we see oil refineries of Puerto Llano y Cartagena and heavy industry of Aviles.
So, How is the relationship between CO2 and light emissions? Energy consumption of street lights, Burn gas on oil extractions and fires, Lights of very active areas as commercial centres and lights from electric centrals.
Them, there is a complicated relationship the money. With the money we built hoses that hoses than later we light their streets. With money we move cars than them we can see moving and with money we put Christmas lights etc.
Because we can see Chrismas lights from orbit: space.com/39124-holiday-…
The CO2 from Fossil fuels is growing by 1.5% but ... I wonder if not more because ...
We detected a 2,2% on the lights growth even if the satellite has some limitations. advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/11/e…
On this web, you can measure your self the light trends on small areas. But we will need to consider some limitations. lighttrends.lightpollutionmap.info
Because you know this image but ... this image is ...
FAKE!!!!! The color of the image are not real.
This is the real image!!! Because there is not yet a color image of the Earth at Night.
Our research team of @cities4tnight and EmiSSI@N is working to create the first one using images taken from the @ISS_Research
We want that to have better CO2 estimations, monitor Health of ecosystems and monitor Human health(this part is complicated).
Because current B&W images are been less and less reliable.
Now there is a HUGE change in technology and that impact the images. We are transforming our sustainable sodium lamps to no so sustainible white LEDs.
Milan, for example, changes the whole city in one go, very fast. One year took to change all sodium lights to white LEDs. Here more details: sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
If you see this image, of before and after, nearly you do not see change. Except for more light o right image and less glare.
But.....
What if you see the color?
You see a big change!!!!
The B&W satellite saw a 50% reduction in Milan. But ...
That reduction was not real for human vision!!! Because we do not see like satellites. There was 0% reduction on human vision and 27% increase in blue light.
It is important to know how B&W sat and color sat work.
B&W sat are sensitive to Infrared light but not to blue light.
Colour sat (aka Astronaut pictures) are sensitive to blue light but not infrared.
Infrared is useless and even a "noise" if what you want is detect visible light, Blue light is a big problem for the environment at night.
The problem is that B&W sats do not see Blue light that we need to detect, and see Infrared that we do not want.
That is why we need this @cities4tnight map.
That is why we need your help on lostatnight.org to locate the @ISS_Research images and create this map.
But ... I used to think that the LEDs are good for the environment, no?
That is a bit more complicated. The LEDs are better than the indoor lights, but NOT the outdoor lights. Sodium lights are already VERY efficient. Also, LEDs can be of any colour, and we are installing white ones that have a huge environmental impact.
It is a complicated topic that needs to be studied in detail in each case.
Manufacturing LEDs can be 4 times less sustainable for Climate change than a Sodium lamp.
But as usually is used less power on LEDs the energy use can make the LEDs more sustainable. But as well we put less power on the LEDs we could do same with sodium lights.
Only when we use ALL the benefits of the LEDs, we have a better solution. The LEDs have to be dimmable, have to be orange, have to do not send light to the sky.
Because lights are producing the Insects armageddon, and after the insects will go the rest of the ecologic piramid. theguardian.com/environment/20…
More white lights are worse nearly for all species ebd.csic.es/Airam/pdf/Long…
Even nearby, this is not snow. This are insects that try to put their eggs on the Tudela Bridge in the Rio Ebro in Spain.phys.org/news/2016-03-e…
Even to much more dim light that we can expect, there are environmental impacts on nearly all species: mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/2…
To give colour to the B&W sat images we also are testing other strategies like the Night up from outreach.icfo.eu/es/nightup/ @ICFOnians
Other usefull links can be:
Colorado School of Mines @eogatpayne experts on the B&W like Fires, Boat and Lights
payneinstitute.mines.edu/eog/
payneinstitute.mines.edu/eog/
Our project @cities4tnight citiesatnight.org
The code.earthengine.google.com Google Earth Engine. A very good tool to use sat images.
Our spin of noktosat.com from @SavestarsCo Experts on the calibration of ISS images, EIA of light pollution and any other kind of light pollution stuff like drones, planes, balloons, etc.
and finally the @ISS_Research Image archive eol.jsc.nasa.gov where images from @esaspaceflight @NASA @JAXA_jp @csa_asc @roscosmos are stored.
Thanks all. And thanks also to @shedka @eglezguardia @SavestarsCo for their help. As well #COP25Madrid #COP25Chile for been able to present this in Madrid.
