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Weird 'UFO mirage' hovering over water in a national park in Alaska


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The footage was captured at the Glacier Bay National Park and Reserve. The park posted the video to its Facebook page and explained that the mirage is called a "Fata Morgana". 

mirage%2Bfata%2Bmorgana.jpg

The strange dome-shaped object in the video is actually your brain being tricked into seeing a distorted version of an island. 

A Fata Morgana is a mirage that appears just above the horizon and can significantly distort an object that's already there. Glacier Bay National Park and Reserve explained on Facebook: "Fata Morgana is a mirage seen within a narrow band on Earth’s horizon. 

Islands in glacier bay turn to UFOs or the flying Dutchman with a little imagination and a pinch of cool science! When air of different densities meet, the air in Earth’s atmosphere acts as a refracting lens, creating the mirage effect we see.

 

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      Evapotranspiration is the combined process of evaporation and transpiration, both of which transfer water from the land surface to the atmosphere as water vapor. Evaporation transforms water from the surface of the ground or bodies of water into water vapor, while transpiration is water vapor that is evaporated from plant tissues and escapes through the stomata, the tiny pores in plant leaves and stems. It is a process that is happening all around us almost all the time, but because water vapor is invisible to the human eye, it is very hard to measure on the ground.  
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      Map of farmlands showing ET data for 2024. The cooler colors represent higher levels of evapotranspiration (ET), while warmer colors indicate areas with less ET.OpenET
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      The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is a major water resource in California.Matthew Trump
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      OpenET’s first international partnership is led by Anderson Ruhoff, a professor in Hydrology and Remote Sensing at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, where his team developed an evapotranspiration model called geeSEBAL for Brazil’s Water Agency.

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      “So I had to find a last minute ticket to Reno and I’m glad I bought it, because when I arrived there they invited me to join Open ET. It was quite a coincidence,” Ruhoff said, smiling as he remembered the spontaneous decision. “We adapted our model for the US and started to participate in their work.”

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      Melton feels this will be a “great test case” for both working with new environmental conditions (in Brazil there frequently is more cloud cover than in the US during key parts of the growing season) and also developing new collaborations.

      “The partnership will help us figure out how we can work with international partners to make the ET data useful,” Melton said. “The key aspect of our approach to geographic expansion is that leading scientists in each country and region, like Dr. Ruhoff, will lead the implementation, accuracy assessment, and the development of applications and partnerships for their country.”

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      Studying evapotranspiration can reveal the impacts of deforestation with even more clarity. And importantly, it’s also public information. “So not only the farmers and water managers but every citizen can check how much water is being used in their area, especially during drought. It’s democratic information in that way,” Ruhoff said. “I think it’s important to have this information openly available and to try and reach as many people as possible.”

      Melton feels there’s the potential to expand the project, if more people like Ruhoff are there to lead the way.

      “There’s huge potential, but there do need to be stakeholders that come to the table and say that this is something that they’re interested in,” Melton said. “Water is so important and at times so contentious that it’s really important the data is seen as trusted. When there is a local leader, that substantially increases the likelihood that it will be trusted, and most importantly, used to bring people together to develop solutions.”


      The geeSEBAL application that Anderson Ruhoff’s team developed, which now informs the OpenET platform. Science Direct/Anderson Ruhoff

      Even when you live in a water-scarce region like California it’s easy to take water for granted. What platforms like OpenET can do for us, however, is make water, even in its most diffuse form, more visible to everyone.

      Written by Jane Berg and Rachel Sender, co-published with the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute

      To learn more about OpenET, visit https://etdata.org/

      Program Contact:
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      NASA Ames Research Center
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