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Solar radiation is the main source of energy for all processes, which occur in the atmosphere and on the Earth’s surface. Its intensity has a profound impact on the chemical composition of plants, and subsequently, on the quality of agricultural crops. As to whether these changes – caused by an increase or decrease in the flux of UV radiation – are significant or insignificant or indeed constructive or harmful, depends on many factors.  

On the one hand, UV radiation favorably influences the life cycle of plants, it boosts the intensity of photosynthesis processes, facilitating the production of chlorophyll and nutrient absorption.  

On the other hand,  excessive UV exposure can cause protein degradation in leaf cells, leading them to die. Plants possess the ability to repair damaged DNA while several are able to protect themselves from synthesizing absorbed ultraviolet light pigment and from changes to key metabolic enzymes.    The danger occurs when the dose of radiation causes damage which exceeds a plant’s regeneration capabilities.   The damage leads to a decrease in crop yields, fertility, commercial quality and severe consequences, such as changes weed-crop synergies.

• To make searching for images easier, a timeline function has been added. This means that images for a period in question, specific dates, or as near as possible to them, can be quickly found and examined. Cloud cover metadata allows you to evaluate beforehand how useful the photos are and to choose the most appropriate ones. This function is available for images from Landsat-8 (l8), Sentinel(se) and RapidEye (re).

• Added to the contour drawing mode is the capacity to create several polygons there and then and enter the coordinates textually (geojson).

However rapid the pace at which technology evolves, more often than not, the surrounding reality remains the same. While one automobile is being launched into a heliocentric orbit, another is being dug out of a snowdrift with a trusty old shovel. And while the design of the shovel has changed many times in terms of style, high tech doesn’t change what essentially it is.
This is especially noticeable when we encounter climatic and meteorological phenomena which seriously complicate life and which can, in some cases, destroy it.
Unfortunately, at the present time, our influence over the weather is restricted predominantly to our polluting of the environment. Or otherwise to dispersing clouds over the city on public holidays.

The effect of quantities and distribution of precipitation on crop cultivation.

Precipitation is agriculture’s main source of moisture. This includes both wet and dry precipitation. Their quantity is one of the key meteorological factors in agricultural productivity.
But it is not simply a case of there being too little or too much precipitation. No less important is its spatial and temporal distribution which increases or decreases potential productivity. The optimal amount of precipitation varies both for different climatic regions and for different crops at various stages of their growth.
Let’s take the year that has passed, 2017, as an example:

India received a total of 841.3 millimeters of precipitation during the monsoon season from June 1 to September 30 that year.
But this monsoon was somewhat freakish. In some parts there was surplus rain, and in others it was insufficient. This cannot but lead to differences in crop productivity in different parts of the country.

Bronislava Stavnitskaya
Product Manager

My main tasks are demand and target audience analysis, product development and market launches and shaping subsequent product development using data insights. I also handle the company’s internal business process-related support and development.

An example of one of the services for agricultural applications offered by VANE has now been added to the Query Builder interface.

The Polygon tool allows you to isolate any outline you want in the photograph, process the satellite images in RGB and EVI, and arrange any color palette with any scale for a specific area.
It is possible to edit it, obtain data on the depicted polygon and download it from the geojson file.

 Then you can get the URL with the assembled polygon and copy it to your site

- the filter algorithm for selecting BEST coverage tiles has changed.
BEST - is the method for overlaying images (parameter value order), and is the best way possible, depending on the parameters selected: date range, satellite, percentage of cloud cover.
Changes to the algorithm have enabled the quality of coverage to be significantly enhanced:

Sentinel-2 - before

Sentinel-2 - after

- combined data sources Landsat 8 and  Landsat-8_TOA

Landsat-8

Landsat-8 + Landsat-8_TOA

All images used in this article were obtained by using a new technology called Cloudless, which was developed by the OpenWeatherMap company. This is a new, non-traditional approach to creating a low cloud cover of Earth using low and medium resolution satellite images. At the heart of this approach lie the principles used in processing Big Data and machine-learning algorithms.
More information about the Cloudless technology can be found here. 

One of the most important physical consequences of global warming is the rise in sea level. Right now, the sea level is rising slowly enough, but, according to forecasts, this process will accelerate over time. This will affect the livelihoods of many coastal regions that will experience flooding. This means that the sea transport network may be seriously affected.
Shoreline erosion and land loss rates will be critical for planning coastal infrastructure.

Part of the Greenland ice sheet.   Global composite coverage  obtained between 08.01.2017 and 11.30.2017 using data from the MODIS spectroradiometer aboard KA Terra.
http://owm.io/sql-viewer?lat=62.6060&lon=-42.0364&zoom=10&where=between(2017-08-01:2017-11-30)&select=red,green,blue&op=rgb&from=cloudless&tabActive=1

Most forecasts say that warming of our planet will continue and is likely to accelerate. Recent research shows that the oceans will rise from 2.5 to 6.5 feet (from 0.8 to 2 meters) by 2100, enough to submerge many cities on the US Eastern Seaboard. But long-term forecasts are not an exact science.
Historically there have been problems matching the changes observed with factors from different sources that supposedly contribute to this process.
At the moment, it has been established that changes in global sea levels are affected by three factors: melting of the polar ice caps and glaciers, thermal expansion of water due to warming of the seas and oceans, and local factors such as changes in marine currents and geological processes (land rising and subsidence) which overlap with the global trend.
Both with the polar icecaps and with the glaciers, the rise in air temperature causes increased melting of large ice cover.
For example, should the Greenland ice sheet alone melt, the sea level could rise by 7m.

Global coverage obtained between 08.01.2017 and 11.30.2017 using data from the MODIS spectroradiometer aboard KA Terra.
http://owm.io/sql-viewer?lat=72.1009&lon=-43.7695&zoom=4&where=between(2017-08-01:2017-11-30)&select=b1,b4,b3&op=rgb&from=terra&tabActive=1

So the, new year, 2018 has come, and it's time to sum up the results of the past year for our company, OpenWeatherMap (UK, US and Latvia), developers of one of the best weather APIs in the world.
A lot happened and much has changed.
During the year, our number of users grew from 600,000 to 1 million. We participated in the Startup Grind Global Conference in Silicon Valley where the team from OpenWeatherMap was named in the top 50 Startup Exhibitions of 2017. Our mature team was filled up with excellent professionals and wonderful people.
We did a lot of new things and qualitatively improved our current developments.
In 2017, we were pleased to present to you:

Weather data: API and Weather Maps

• The Open Dashboard for Agricultural Monitoring
   can help give you an idea of the possible use for meteorological and satellite data in your agricultural applications.
• Specially for the agriculture sector, we launched an API for accumulated temperature data and an API for accumulated precipitation data.
• The Weather Historical Bulk service.
  Now you can simply choose a city (or several cities) and download an archive, which contains bulk file with the weather history up to 5 years - any day, week or even several years.
• A new and improved version of an API for UV-index
   
  Throughout the entire year, we worked constantly on our history weather API. For this year, the amount of data supplied and speed to process that data increased significantly. Also, we made it possible to quickly upload data in a format that doesn’t require additional processing and can be understood by any user.
  Our Weather Maps app changed qualitatively.
  This year, we added the ability to switch the layers of weather and satellite maps, create various combinations with them, and connect them to mobile and web apps.

Satellite data: Vane platform

This year, we significantly improved our satellite platform. Our team undertook a huge amount of work and in June were able to present  a new version  of the satellite image processing  platform VANE.

Based on the Vane platform, we developed a new product called  Global Satellite Base Map, which uses visual tools and query language to generate a map from satellite images. The uniqueness of the product is that all data processing is done on the fly, and there are no presets or pre-made calculations. The user defines the parameters for a calculation and image processing and immediately receives a result for any territory. This capability was only possible thanks to Vane, our super powerful data processing platform.

We recently presented you with Query Builder, our new interface for the Vane platform. Now you can use this simple tool to create your own map in just a few seconds, and with just one click receive a completed link for display on your site or app using a web map library like Leaflet, Open Layer, Mapbox and Google Map.

We are grateful to everyone that worked with us for all this time. We thank you all your feedback and for not getting bored by our tech support.
We have a ton of plans for the coming year. Stay tuned, and you will see a lot of the new and interesting things to come. Subscribe to our Telegram Channel https://t.me/openweathermap and get news first about our updates and new products!