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SILO - MJO Satellite Loop

Satellite Loop

Choose your period of interest:

Ruler

What to look for in the satellite loop
The loop is useful for looking at alternating "active" and "inactive" phases of the monsoons and other large-scale atmospheric systems involving deep convection in the tropics. One cause of these active and inactive phases that can sometimes be observed is the Madden Julian Oscillation or 30 to 60 day intra-seasonal oscillation (ISO). The basic signature of the ISO is a broad area of extensive deep tropical convection (a fairly dense cover of white cloud tops along a few thousand kilometres on or near the equator) next to a broad area of suppressed deep tropical convection (a fairly sparse cover of white cloud tops). For example, there may be very active deep tropical convection to the northwest of Australia in the equatorial Indian Ocean, while deep tropical convection in the equatorial western Pacific Ocean is unusually suppressed. The whole signature tends to move eastward. Hence an area of active deep tropical convection in the equatorial Indian Ocean tends to move eastward across northern Australia into the western Pacific Ocean.
 
The satellite loops are also useful in observing the development and movements of the North West Cloud Band, "active" and "inactive" phases in the SPCZ and weather systems south of the tropics. The evolution of cold fronts and other weather systems can be studied using the satellite loops, analysis charts and maps provided through SILO and the Bureau of Meteorology.   
 
About the tropical 30 to 60 day intra-seasonal oscillation
 
Important Notice: You might need to install JVM to run Java applets.

Free sample ( last 7 days )
Consists of the animation (loop of 5 satellite image)

20 Frames of 60 days (subscription only)
Consists of the most current and every third day to 60 days (20 frames).

Full 60 frames (subscription only)
Consists of the most current 60 days (60 frames).

All the above options of satellite images animation are done in such a way that the client has to receive all frames before animation begins. A word of caution, the more frames requested the longer you will have to wait. Download speed depends entirely on the speed of your modem and your carrier.

SILO also provides users another option, getting the images via ftp and the animating the images on the client's own computer. This can be done by downloading all the required software, images and html to the local (client) machine. With the images and software locally, the animation should be faster.
If the client decided to look at the satellite loop 3 days later, all that would have to be done is to download (via ftp) the missing 3 days and the html only instead of all 60 days.
More information about running animation locally.

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